Margaret Ward – författare

This landmark book, reissued with a new foreword to mark the centenary of Irish women being granted the right to vote, is the first comprehensive analysis of the Irish suffrage movement from its mid-nineteenth-century beginnings to when feminist militancy exploded on the streets of Dublin and Belfast in the early twentieth century. Younger, more militant suffragists took their cue from their British counterparts, two of whom travelled to Ireland to throw a hatchet into the carriage of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith on O’Connell Bridge in 1912 (missing him but grazing Home Rule leader John Redmond, who was in the same carriage; both politicians opposed giving women the Vote).

Despite such dramatic publicity, and other non-violent campaigning, women’s suffrage was a minority interest in an Ireland more concerned with the issue of gaining independence from Britain. The particular complexity of the Irish struggle is explored with new perspectives on unionist and nationalist suffragists and the conflict between Home Rule and suffragism, campaigning for the vote in country towns, life in industrial Belfast, conflicting feminist views on the First World War, and the suffragist uncovering of sexual abuse and domestic violence, as well as the pioneering use of hunger strike as a political tool.

The ultimate granting of the franchise in 1918 represented the end of a long-fought battle by Irish women for the right to equal citizenship, and the beginning of a new Ireland that continues to debate the rights and equality of its female citizens.

This landmark book, reissued with a new foreword to mark the centenary of Irish women being granted the right to vote, is the first comprehensive analysis of the Irish suffrage movement from its mid-nineteenth-century beginnings to when feminist militancy exploded on the streets of Dublin and Belfast in the early twentieth century. Younger, more militant suffragists took their cue from their British counterparts, two of whom travelled to Ireland to throw a hatchet into the carriage of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith on O’Connell Bridge in 1912 (missing him but grazing Home Rule leader John Redmond, who was in the same carriage; both politicians opposed giving women the Vote).

Despite such dramatic publicity, and other non-violent campaigning, women’s suffrage was a minority interest in an Ireland more concerned with the issue of gaining independence from Britain. The particular complexity of the Irish struggle is explored with new perspectives on unionist and nationalist suffragists and the conflict between Home Rule and suffragism, campaigning for the vote in country towns, life in industrial Belfast, conflicting feminist views on the First World War, and the suffragist uncovering of sexual abuse and domestic violence, as well as the pioneering use of hunger strike as a political tool.

The ultimate granting of the franchise in 1918 represented the end of a long-fought battle by Irish women for the right to equal citizenship, and the beginning of a new Ireland that continues to debate the rights and equality of its female citizens.

Studies of Irish nationalism have been primarily historical in scope and overwhelmingly male in content. Too often, the ‘shadow of the gunman’ has dominated. Little recognition has been given to the part women have played, yet over the centuries they have undertaken a variety of roles – as combatants, prisoners, writers and politicians. In this exciting new book the full range of women’s contribution to the Irish nationalist movement is explored by writers whose interests range from the historical and sociological to the literary and cultural. From the little known contribution of women to the earliest nationalist uprisings of the 1600s and 1700s, to their active participation in the republican campaigns of the twentieth century, different chapters consider the changing contexts of female militancy and the challenge this has posed to masculine images and structures.

Using a wide range of sources, including textual analysis, archives and documents, newspapers and autobiographies, interviews and action research, individual writers examine sensitive and highly complex debates around women’s role in situations of conflict.

At the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship, this is a major contribution to wider feminist debates about the gendering of nationalism, raising questions about the extent to which women’s rights, demands and concerns can ever be fully accommodated within nationalist movements.

Studies of Irish nationalism have been primarily historical in scope and overwhelmingly male in content. Too often, the ‘shadow of the gunman’ has dominated. Little recognition has been given to the part women have played, yet over the centuries they have undertaken a variety of roles – as combatants, prisoners, writers and politicians. In this exciting new book the full range of women’s contribution to the Irish nationalist movement is explored by writers whose interests range from the historical and sociological to the literary and cultural. From the little known contribution of women to the earliest nationalist uprisings of the 1600s and 1700s, to their active participation in the republican campaigns of the twentieth century, different chapters consider the changing contexts of female militancy and the challenge this has posed to masculine images and structures.

Using a wide range of sources, including textual analysis, archives and documents, newspapers and autobiographies, interviews and action research, individual writers examine sensitive and highly complex debates around women’s role in situations of conflict.

At the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship, this is a major contribution to wider feminist debates about the gendering of nationalism, raising questions about the extent to which women’s rights, demands and concerns can ever be fully accommodated within nationalist movements.