Multifarious Feminisms: Ireland from 1870 to 1970

______

A Thesis Presented to

The Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences Florida Gulf Coast University

In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts in History

______By Kaley Dietrich 2017

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Approval Sheet

This Thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in History

______Kaley Dietrich

Approved:

______Elizabeth Bouldin, Ph.D. Committee Chair/Advisor

______Nicola Foote, Ph.D.

______Eric Strahorn, Ph.D.

Florida Gulf Coast University Fort Myers, Florida

The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.

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Table of Contents

Signature Page 1

Table of Contents 2

Acknowledgements 3

Introduction 4

Chapter 1 7 Literature Review

Chapter 2 18 Education Reform in Ireland: The First “Manifestation”

Chapter 3 33 A “Wave” and “Manifestation” Meet: The Irish War for Independence and Suffrage

Chapter 4 57 The Backlash against Feminism in New Ireland

Chapter 5 74 Looking Forward: Ireland on a Global Feminist Stage

Conclusion 84

Bibliography 87 3

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my friends, my father, the history faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University, and the resources available through the Florida Gulf Coast University Library. I first want to thank my father for his unwavering support in all of my endeavors. Without him, I would not have pursued a career in history. I would also like to thank my friends Darcy Kelly-Laviolette and Joshua Fortin for always lending their time to act as an editor and as a support system. Throughout my time as an undergraduate and graduate student at FGCU, the history department faculty have gone above and beyond in their helpfulness and accommodation in allowing me to continue to study Irish history in whatever course I was enrolled in. The ability to weave this topic into multiple courses made it possible for me to dedicate the time needed to fully develop the arguments presented in this thesis. I would particularly like to thank Dr. Elizabeth Bouldin and Dr. Eric Strahorn for the time they have taken to work with me individually through formal classes and directed readings. Each have challenged me to be the best historian I can. Finally, this project would not have been possible without the FGCU Library system. I could not have completed this thesis without the ability to order books from across the country and have access to the extensive collection that the library has to offer.

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Introduction

This project developed out of a long term interest in Irish history as well as from my own journey as a feminist. While researching the role of women in the Irish War for Independence, I had noticed that Irish women did not experience feminism in the same way as their English and

American neighbors. Much of the study of Irish women has fallen into the category of women’s history. This thesis argues that due to the unique nature of feminism in Ireland, the history of women in the country warrants a second look by placing the history into a feminist context. In analyzing Irish feminist history, this thesis also confronts the problematic aspects of the “waves” model that previous scholarship has liberally employed when attempting to track and quantify feminism. The “waves” model has proven to be limiting when attempting to accurately understand feminist history in regions outside Britain and the United States. As feminism, and feminist history becomes increasingly global, it is necessary to reconsider how women of the past experienced and fought for feminist ideals. This thesis reconsiders the “waves” model in the particular national context of Ireland as a case study between 1870 and 1970.

Beginning in 1870s Ireland, Chapter One argues that feminism took its first real place in the Irish public narrative through education reforms. As education reform was tied to class issues, rather than being exclusively a women’s issue, activist women had more success in asserting their place within academia and, by extension, the public sphere. When activist women eased their way into the classroom without drastically altering the strict separate sphere system, the people and experienced an initial “manifestation” of feminism through the work of proto-feminists, which in turn assisted the republicans among them in the fight for an independent Ireland. For the purposes of this thesis, a “manifestation” of feminism will be defined as the introduction of feminist ideas that are present in the larger cultural narrative, and 5 results in gains for women’s equality, but does not significantly alter the structure of society on its own.

Moving into the twentieth century, nationalism and the desire for an independent Ireland began to dominate the social and political arena. Republican women, who largely benefitted from access to higher education, were eager to be involved in the fight for independence.

Throughout the rise of nationalism and the War for Independence, republican women had prominent roles as writers, smugglers, protestors, fighters, and leaders. Their involvement boosted the cause for women’s suffrage. While the “first wave” of feminism in Britain and the

United States was centered on suffrage, the “first wave” in Ireland came out of the rise of nationalism. In order for Irish women to gain the vote, they felt the need to stand with republican men and fight for their country. For the purposes of this thesis a “wave” will be defined as the introduction of feminist ideas that have dominated the social and political narrative that result in significant social and political changes.

The final two chapters explore how the government of the had balanced their strict Catholic ideals with a progressive global culture throughout the twentieth century.

Chapter three argues that during the and the transition period to independence that took place between 1922 and the 1950s, there was a great deal of political backlash against feminism. However, once activist women had exercised their agency through breaking out of the private sphere and having a role in public society, they could not fully return to only being wives and mothers. This chapter also addresses the place of the Catholic Church in government proceedings that directly affected women. Chapter four looks ahead to what is commonly referred to as “second wave feminism.” Feminism during 1960s and 1970s Ireland came out of a hibernation it had been in for nearly twenty-years due to the release of the birth control pill and 6 increased communication between international feminist organizations. While Britain and the

United States faced the same questions concerning reproductive rights, the Catholic people and government in Ireland were affected beyond a simple change in legislation. This period can be defined as a “second wave” but it cannot be viewed as the same as Britain and America’s second wave. At the end of the second wave, Irish women did not receive the same reproductive rights as British and American women and due the nation’s deep relationship with the Catholic Church,

Irish feminists did not necessarily mirror British or American feminists. Going forward, the and government will need multiple waves and manifestations to fully separate themselves from conservative Catholic ideals that had shaped the country from the beginning in order to achieve full gender equality.

The chapters that follow are intended to provide an analysis of Irish feminism that has yet to be explored in the historiography, as well as introduce terminology that best describes the history of feminism in Ireland. As feminist history continues to develop as a sub-category of women’s history, the Irish people and government’s experience with feminism provides a unique case-study for feminist historians due to the Western and Catholic nature of their culture and political outlook, as well as the previous colonial status of the country.

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Chapter One: Literature Review

Women’s history in Ireland has grown immensely since the 1990s. As a field, the floodgates were opened concerning primary source material in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

With this, historians wrote works that aimed to be comprehensive in addressing all aspects of life for Irish women. Margaret Ward, Louise Ryan, Rosemary Cullen Owens, and Ann Matthews have produced comprehensive and highly enlightening works across various historiographical schools of thought. These four women make repeat appearances throughout this research project, providing a unique look into the lives of Irish women across modern history. Maria Luddy, Tara

Keenan-Thomson, and Tina O’Toole are three historians who exemplify the current state of the field. While Luddy has worked to make primary source material as accessible as possible,

Keenan-Thomson and O’Toole incorporated feminist history in order to understand how feminism fits into the Irish experience. Each of these seven scholars bring something new in terms of primary source material and analysis to the field. Historians of Irish women’s history, like Keenan-Thomson have taken steps to be more interdisciplinary by bridging the gap between history and theory. As the relationship has just begun to be forged in recent years, there is still work to be done. The second portion of this literature review touches on the field of feminist history in its current state. Since the coinage of the term “waves” in 1968, scholars have come to see the “waves” model as problematic and not representative of the feminist experience in

America or internationally, leading to this research project’s argument that Ireland’s feminism is unique and warrants revisiting the Irish woman’s experience over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Margaret Ward and Louise Ryan are two of the leading scholars in Irish women’s history.

Publishing as authors and editors, both individually and as a team, their works are invaluable to 8 the field. Ward published her first work, Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish

Nationalism in 1989. Since that time, she has published biographies on and Hanna

Sheehy Skeffington. Of her individual works, In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish

Nationalism proved to be of the most use to this project. Published in 1995, it signals a shift in focus of Irish historians that will be seen later with Maria Luddy. Beginning in the late 1880s and ending in the late 1930s, this edited primary source collection combined meeting minutes, letters, articles, speeches, and diary entries of major Irish republican women. Ward also provided a short introduction of one or two sentences prior to each source. While making these primary sources available in one place is extremely useful, Ward’s organization and the women she chose places it above other edited collections of its kind. Issues from the to the 1935

Conditions of Employment Act were addressed by major activists like Hanna Sheehy

Skeffington as well as completely anonymous women. Ward did not confine herself to one region or one economic class when putting together this work.

Where Ward focuses on history, Ryan’s background is in sociology. In her monograph,

Gender, Identity, and the Irish Press, 1922-1937: Embodying the Nation (2002), she argued that while Irish and English experiences in globalism were similar, Ireland faced questions of identity, as a post-colonial society. Her discussion of Ireland’s unique experience is one of few attempts to place Ireland in a comparative analytical framework. Ryan employed newspapers in order to understand how thoughts on dress, language, and nationalism varied between private citizens and major political figures. The work set itself apart in that it attempted to distinguish laws from everyday practice, particularly in the way women dress. While the Catholic Church and political leaders continuously sought to legislate how women dressed and behaved in public,

Ryan found that Irish citizens, both male and female, were largely nonchalant about fashion and 9 would rather allow women to dress how they pleased. While other works have discussed the impact of legislation on everyday practice, none have been as clear in their intent as Ryan.

Together, Ryan and Ward have published several edited collections. In their 2004 work

Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women, and Wicked Hags, they bring together scholars in order to comprehensively examine the work women performed during various rebellions, including the War for Independence, in both rural and urban regions. In 2007, they published Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens. This work followed the same format as

Irish Women and Nationalism by addressing women across all regions, as well as addressing various other cultural issues, like domestic violence, to further contextualize the issues many

Irish women faced. What makes Ward and Ryan unique in their works is that they broaden their focus beyond the elite. To them, the everyday women in rural Killarney were just as significant as prominent activists like Maud Gonne and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington. While biographies on the major figures continued to be produced, this was a clear shift in priority for Irish women’s historians as more primary source material came to light and as scholars became interested in non-elite activists.

Much like Ward and Ryan, Rosemary Cullen Owens is a scholar who has published extensively throughout her career as a professional historian. One of her most influential works is A Social History of Women in Ireland, 1870-1970. This massive work is one of the few comprehensive works on Irish women’s history. Ward analyzed the early women’s movement, suffrage, the war for independence, family life, and women in the new state. Prior to its publication in 2005, Irish women’s historians generally focused their work on one aspect of Irish women’s history or in a specific time period. A Social History was successful in bringing each generation of women’s rights activists into conversation with one another. Owens has been 10 described by those in the field of Irish women’s history as one of the “icons” of not only women’s history, but Irish history as a whole.1 While she focused much of her research on suffrage and the war for independence, her contributions as a scholar paved the way for future historians with her dedication to providing the most comprehensive and thorough research on women in modern Irish history.

Ann Matthews is a more recent scholar, compared to Owens, Ward, and Ryan. Receiving her Ph.D. in 2003 at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, her works illustrate the shifting nature in how historians of Irish women’s history tackle the field.2 Three of her most notable works focused on the war for independence, but the focus was on the biographies of ordinary women who were involved, rather than the powerhouses like Hanna Sheehy

Skeffington and . In Matthew’s works on the Irish War for Independence,

Renegages: Irish Republican Women, 1900-1922 (2011), Dissidents: Irish Republican Women,

1922-41 (2012), and The (2014) address the contributions of republican Irish women as well as highlighting some of the unsung heroes of the time. Matthews took another important step by identifying, for the first time, the names of all 645 women who were arrested during the Civil War in Dissidents.3 By moving away from the few key figures of the War for

Independence and the Civil War and shining the light on other women, scholars are able to give a voice to the everyday Irish republican women involved, highlighting their complex nature rather than reducing them to a footnote.

1 Conor Reidy, "Confessions of a departing WHAI Secretary," Women's History Association of Ireland. https://womenshistoryassociation.com/blog/confessions-of-a-departing-whai-secretary. 2 Ann Matthews, "Ann's Biography," WordPress. http://annmatthews.ie/anns-biography. 3 Ann Matthews, "Dissidents: Irish Republican Women, 1922-1941," WordPress. http://annmatthews.ie/dissidents- irish-republican-women-1922-41. 11

Continuing with the trend of magnifying all Irish women, Maria Luddy has been a leader in highlighting primary source material. While she has produced monographs addressing the larger role of women in Irish society, nearly all of her works have been documentary histories and collected biographies. One of her most notable publications is A Directory of Sources for

Women’s History in Ireland which holds 100,000 primary sources available online for scholars to use. Another notable work of hers, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918: A Documentary History, has been reprinted six times since its initial publication in 1995.4 Luddy follows in the footsteps of Ward, Owens, and Matthews. However, she expanded her audience by noting in the introduction of the work that Women in Ireland was meant to serve as an introduction for those unfamiliar with Irish women’s history and as a valuable resource for current scholars, to be used in and out of the classroom.5 By making her work as accessible as possible through her online database and this collection, she has made it easier for scholars outside of Ireland’s borders to become familiar with, and add to, the field. Due to the sheer number of sources and the multiple reprints, Luddy’s work has proven to be highly valuable to historians.

The above historians have aimed to tell the story and provide women of the past a voice, where before they had none. None of the founding scholars of Irish women’s history have explored the question of how the history relates to Irish feminism in a global context, apart from

Ward’s quick mention of Ireland’s unique experience. Their goal was to bring Irish women’s history to light. Work from current scholars have attempted to focus on the unique aspects of

Irish feminisms and provide a way to further track and quantify this feminism. This illustrates another distinct shift in the field with the movement away from Irish women’s history to the

4 Maria Luddy, "Emeritus Professor Maria Luddy," University of Warwick. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/people/staff_index/mluddy. 5 Maria Luddy, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918: A Documentary History (: Cork University Press, 1995), xxv. 12 history of Irish feminism. Where women’s history aims to tell the story of all women, regardless of political leaning, the history of feminism manifests as a sub-field that focuses on how feminist movements have developed and impacted countries and cultures.6 Tara Keenan-Thomson is a prime example of where many of the most recent scholars are headed. Keenan-Thomson published her first monograph, Irish Women and Street Politics, 1956-1973: “This Could Be

Contagious” in 2010.7 In this work she, analyzed the feminist movement between 1953 and

1973. One of Keenan-Thomson’s major insight is that there is “no single recipe…or time line” when it comes to feminist consciousness appearing in a given nation and that, in turn, each nation will experience feminism in their own way.8 While this may seem obvious, it was rarely explored before this work in the context of Irish history. Three years later, literary scholar Tina

O’Toole published The Irish New Woman. O’Toole follows the same path as Keenan-Tomson by connecting feminism with the historical experience of Irish women. O’Toole argues that the interaction between New Women and Irish political culture produced an iconic image of a woman that could illicit change, which inspired many young women at the end of nineteenth century to seek political agency. It is the first work to emphasize the relationship between and the New Woman of the twentieth-century.9 Much of the reform in how scholars track and quantify feminism is seen in sociology. Keenan-Tomson and O’Toole’s work exemplified how, in recent years, a real bridge has been built between sociology and history.

6 Freedman, Estelle, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 2002), vii-viii, 327-332. 7 Tara Keenan-Thomson, "JCU Authors," John Cabot University. https://johncabot.libguides.com/JCUAuthorspublic/Keenan-Thomson. 8 Tara Keenan-Tomson, Irish Women and Street Politics, 1956-1973: This Could Be Contagious (, Irish Academic Press, 2010), 7. 9 Tina O’Toole, The Irish New Woman (New York: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2013), 5-6. 13

The history of feminism is distinct from women’s history. In recent years, as illustrated by Keenan-Tomson and O’Toole, scholars have begun to address how feminism fits into the history and how each woman experiences feminism differently. Much of this analysis stems from the growing understanding that the “waves” model used in feminist theory is problematic. The idea of “waves” was first suggested in 1968 when Martha Lear coined the terms “first” and

“second” waves in an article published in the New York Times. She introduced “waves” as a way to distinguish the current feminists from those that came before. In her article, she defines the

“second wave” of feminism as the effort ot achieve functional economic and political equality between men and women.10 Lear’s dive into what a “second wave” feminism is focuses on white, middle class American women. In subsequent work, “waves” became the preferred method by scholars to characterize and describe feminist activism and theory. As scholars weighed in on how to further define the waves, Susan Bolotin introduced the term “post- feminism” in 1982 in order to describe the changing nature of feminism as a movement. Bolotin had noticed a shift in the fourteen years since Lear coined the term “waves.” Bolotin noted that a great deal of women, regardless of background, were afraid to label themselves as feminists because it was considered a dated movement that had a negative connotation. Some women chose to not label themselves but still believe in the core values and goals of the feminist movement. Bolotin also saw a clear divide between the “second wave” feminists and the new generation of women. Neither really understood the other and there was an atmosphere of distrust amongst the groups concerning each other’s motives and goals for equality amongst the sexes.11

10 Martha Weinman Lear, "The Second Feminist Wave," New York Times, Mar 10, 1968. 11 Susan Bolotin, "Voices from the Post-Feminist Generation," New York TImes, October 17, 1982. 14

For the last fifty years, “waves” has been the metaphor of choice for tracking and quantifying feminism. The first wave is understood as women in the United States and Great

Britain gaining the right to vote in the early twentieth century.12 The second wave concerns the

United States and Great Britain addressing equal pay, discrimination, and reproductive rights in the 1960s and 1970s.13 Finally, according to gender historian Martha Rampton, the third major wave occurred in the 1990s, again, in the United States and Great Britain and emphasized the recognition of intersectionality amongst women of all backgrounds.14

Challenging the “waves” model has become more common in the last several years, with many feminist scholars and feminist activist women commenting on multiple platforms. While few have provided a more concrete and open definition of “wave,” an increasing number of scholars have begun to reevaluate how to use the “waves” model as feminism has become more intersectional. Nancy Hewitt’s article “Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Waves

Metaphor” in Feminist Studies illustrates the most common method of reevaluating the “waves” model. While the image of a “wave” has been paired with an oceanic image, Hewitt argued that it would be more beneficial to instead view them as radio waves. She based this on the fact that radio frequencies are based on the size of the wave in a more precise way than an oceanic wave.

This challenged the current model by changing how a wave is visualized in order to account for more subtle advances in gender equality, stemming the argument that feminism happens at different levels of intensity. She called for scholars to reevaluate the decade following first wave

12 See Selected Writings of Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and Eugenics, edited by Cari Carpenter (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,2010). 13 See The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1963) and The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1949). 14 Martha Rampton, “Four Waves of Feminism,” Pacific Magazine, 2008. 15 feminism, rather ditch the model entirely.15 Many other scholars from multiple fields have challenged the “waves” concept. Around the same time as Hewitt’s article, “Is it Time to Jump

Ship? Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor,” a collection of essays in which various scholars discuss their take on the “waves” model was published in Feminist Formations. Dorothy Cobble, for example, argues for an extended timeline of the women’s movement, rather than breaking it into waves that are only two or three decades apart. Others, like Leandra Zarnow and Stephanie

Gilmore, contemplated the limiting nature of having the metaphor at all, especially concerning geographic bias.16 While all of the scholars in this special issue have some qualms with the metaphor and model, nearly all agree that they are valuable when it comes to understanding the movement, especially in political and social contexts.17

Much of the criticism of the “waves” model comes from international feminist scholars seeking a way to analyze their own feminisms outside of Britain and the United States. A prominent example of this is Women’s Writing in Columbia: An Alternative History edited by

Cherilyn Elston. This anthology directly challenges the assumption that feminism, and by extension the “waves” model, is a “Western import.” Elston argues, much like Keenan-Tomson, that due to the assumption that feminism is Anglo-American by nature, historians need to revisit the experiences of Columbian women by placing it in the feminist context.18 The feminist movement in Columbia is part of a larger global movement that feminist scholars have explored quite thoroughly. Much of this began during the 1975 International Women’s Year, established by the United Nations General Assembly, in which governments like Mexico, Germany, and the

15 Nancy Hewitt, “Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Waves Metaphor,” in Feminist Frequencies 38, no. 3 (Fall 2012), 659. 16 Kathleen Laughlin, “Is it Time to Jump Ship? Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor,” in Feminist Formations 22, no. 1 (Spring 2010), 86. 17 Laughlin, “Is it Time to Jump Ship?,” 84. 18 Cherilyn Elston, Women’s Writing in Columbia: An Alternative History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 2. 16

United States combined their resources in order to implement a plan of action in order to strive for gender equality and representation for all women.19

Two leading works that have illustrated the increasingly global nature of women’s history, and by extension the history of feminism, are Bonnie Smith’s Global Feminisms Since

1945 and Mary Hawkesworth’s Globalization and Feminist Activism. Both of these works address how globalism in itself has impacted the lives of women. Smith’s edited collection includes non-Anglo-American authors to address how nation-building, political activism, non- governmental organizations, and liberation has transformed how societies on each continent function. Hawkesworth’s monograph illustrates how globalism affects power dynamics between genders by focusing on economics, career opportunities, and every day social interactions.

While there are scholars who aim to reevaluate the “waves” model, only a select few have applied this thinking to Irish history. One scholar who has taken up this challenge is Mary

Ryan. Her article “A Feminism of their Own?: Irish Women’s History and Contemporary Irish

Women’s Writing” examines Irish women’s history from the perspective that the Irish experience is a unique one that is worth placing into the feminist narrative. In her article, she highlighted the role of the Catholic Church.20 Ryan looked to fictional “chick lit” to analyze how

Ireland has grown from a deeply conservative nation to one that is more open to the idea of female sexual freedom. The works she examines were published in the early 2000s. From them, she highlighted passages that put a woman’s sexuality front and center, especially those aspects that Irish Catholic Church officials had worked to keep hidden, especially domestic violence.21

19 "World Conferences on Women," UN Women, http://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/intergovernmental- support/world-conferences-on-women. 20 Mary Ryan, “A Feminism of Their Own?: Irish Women’s History and Contemporary Irish Women’s Writing,” in Estudios Irlandeses no. 5 (2010), 93-94. 21 Ryan, “A Feminism of Their Own,?” 96. 17

She successfully illustrated that due to Ireland’s unique relationship with the Catholic Church and the treatment of a woman’s sexuality, Irish feminist history stands apart from its Western counterparts.

Each scholar examined in this literature review has contributed greatly to their respective fields with their analysis and mission to represent women of all walks of life. Since the 1990s,

Irish women’s history particular has undergone significant changes that has pushed it into the realm of feminist history. I seek to continue on the path that has been started by the scholars discussed here by highlighting the complexity of women’s lives in Ireland and their unique experience with feminism beginning in the 1860s. I will further challenge the “waves” model by providing new insight to how we may, more accurately, track, quantify, and conceptualize Irish women’s relationship with feminism.

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Chapter Two: Education Reform in Ireland: The First “Manifestation”

With rigid, separate spheres and the prominent role of the Catholic Church in everyday life, feminism had to, initially, be introduced gradually for the Irish people and government to entertain the idea of gender equality. As women in England and the United States were obtaining the right to an education, many Irish women felt that they were just as entitled to an education as any other woman. When activists demanded access to an education that was equal to a man’s in the late nineteenth century, it was a radical move that in effect shaped the first wave of feminism for Irish women. This demand for education was the first manifestation of feminism in the country. Though the women involved in education reform cannot be called feminists, it is accurate to describe them as proto-feminists. Compared to a feminist, a proto-feminist is a woman, generally from the eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries, who advocated for women rights to an extent but had no understanding of what “feminism” meant, in the terms of what we now think of as feminist theory.22 While education reform between 1870 and 1910 dealt more in class issues than gender, it worked to the advantage of advocates for female education. As the

Western world saw the emergence of industrial capitalism throughout the nineteenth century, arithmetic and basic reading were quickly becoming essential skills, regardless of gender.

Though formal education for girls initially relied heavily on modern languages and domestic arts, it provided just enough change for women to insert themselves into the public sphere by simply being present in the classroom, without drastically undermining the patriarchal system.

Education reform was a tedious process, as it lacked the sensationalism that would be seen

22 Eileen Hunt Botting and Sarah L. Houser, “’Drawing the Line of Equality’:Hannah Mather Crocker on Women’s Rights,” The American Political Science Review 100, no. 2 (May, 2006), 265. 19 during the war for independence and fight for suffrage.23 But, paired with women like Isabella

Tod and Ann Jellico, who worked to open schools and demanded a seat at the dinner table, so to speak, women took their first real place in public society that provided the women who led the first wave of feminism in the early twentieth-century with the tools they needed in order to succeed.

Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh describes the education movement for women in Ireland as a

“quiet revolution.”24 Most of the Irish population did not have access to formal education, regardless of whether they were seeking one or not. There was no public school system and a private education was beyond the means of most of the population. Another Irish gender historian, Judith Harford, also notes that a rivalry between Protestants, Catholics, and Quakers played a role in creating an education system for both boys and girls.25 A national school system was first established in Ireland in 1831, with the creation of the government run National Board of Education. Prior to the establishment of the board, Irish families had limited options. Poor families could send their children to a Hedge School, which educated both boys and girls for a small fee and were locally run by rural communities, or to “poor schools” that were run by religious institutions and private philanthropists. Upper-middle class families had the option to send their children to boarding schools or hire a private tutor.26 Unsatisfied with these choices, lay women organized their own independent schools as an alternative in their own counties, but they were limited in funds and had to regularly appeal to individuals or religious institutions in

23 Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, “A Quiet Revolution: Women and Second-Level Education in Ireland, 1878-1930,” The New Hibernia Review 13, no. 2 (Summer, 2009), 45. 24 Ó hÓgartaigh, “A Quiet Revolution,” 51. 25 Judith Harford, “The Movement for the Higher Education of Women in Ireland: Gender Equality or Denominational Rivalry?,” The History of Education 34, no. 5, 497. 26 Maria Luddy, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918: A Documentary History (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), 89. 20 order to keep their doors open.27 The struggle for funding was felt by all schools that attempted to provide an education for the poor of Ireland.

The Irish people’s struggle for an education dates back to the Education Act of 1695 where Catholics in the British Isles, who predominately resided in Ireland, were prohibited from sending their children to be educated at any Roman Catholic school. This act also prohibited all

Catholics from teaching in both public and private environments. To ensure the full exclusion of

Catholics from education, the Act extended to Protestants, proclaiming that any Protestant that allowed their child under fourteen years old to be educated in Catholicism would be subject to punishment. This act remained in place until 1782.28 Separate from the Act, Protestant leaders were required to establish a school and provide a teacher for each parish in Ireland. That requirement was generally ignored due to the sheer cost of supporting the schools, approximately forty-thousand pounds annually. Peasants simply could not afford to keep a school in their region, regardless of whether they were Protestant or Catholic. Under these restrictions, most

Irish children went without any sort of formal education. Those who did receive a formal

Protestant education were elite males.29 Accommodations for poor children who were able to receive an education at Hedge Schools were unpleasant. Classes were held in cabins with dirt floors, many without chimneys or windows. Desks were a luxury, as well as proper chairs.

Schools had been so desperate for a teacher that any person who wanted the job could have it as

27 Luddy, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918, 94. 28 Patricia Schaffer. "Laws in Ireland for the Suppression of Popery, commonly known as the Penal Laws: Statutes by Subject-- Eduation." Columbia University Law School. https://www.law.umn.edu/library/irishlaw/subjectlist/education. 29 , “Education in Ireland in the 18th Century,” in The Irish Monthly 53, no. 628 (October, 1925), 514- 516. 21 long as they weren’t Catholic. Without any sense of order, schools were highly independent and irregular in how they operated.30

Despite legal and economic restrictions, some schools were able to provide an education to girls, albeit middle-class girls. A significant number of these schools were part of some

Protestant denomination. This lends itself to Harford’s argument that Protestant denominations were shifting policy in order to retain and grow membership as more families desired to send their daughters to school. The Clonmel boarding school, established in 1787 by Quaker women, was notable for its progressive attitudes towards education and beliefs on the place of girls in society. They taught reading, writing, grammar, geography, and arithmetic. Though they aimed to produce moral and chaste students, their curriculum was broad for the time by offering subjects that did not directly tie to domestic duties.31 Even with this religious motivation, attending one of these institutions was still expensive and unattainable for most of the Irish population. The expenses for St. Mary’s Boarding School in 1848 was on par with many non- boarding private schools today.32 After adjusting for inflation, the yearly tuition was £2,871

($3,080). If a family wanted their daughter to study music, singing, drawing, or dancing under any of the Sisters, there would be an additional fee of £287 ($308), or £587 ($523) under a

Master. In addition to these costs, girls were expected to bring their own sheets, pillows, towels,

30 Henry Kingsmill Moore, An Unwritten Chapter in the History of Education; Being the History of the Society for the Education of the Poor of Ireland, generally known as the Kildare Place Society 1811-1831 (: MacMillan and co., 1904), 16. 31 [Clonmel Boarding School for Girls], “Boarding School for Young Ladies,” in Women in Ireland, 1800-1918, ed. Maria Luddy (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), 103-104. 32 National Center for Educational Statistics, "Private elementary and secondary enrollment, number of schools, and average tuition, by school level, orientation, and tuition: Selected years, 1999–2000 through 2011-12.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_205.50.asp. 22 napkins, and silverware.33 Sending a working class girl with this sort of bill was virtually impossible.

There was a forty-nine year gap between the repeal of the Education Act and the establishment of the state education system in 1831. This was a period of great turmoil. A government Commission on Education gathered in 1806, on orders by the British Parliament, to assess the current state of affairs in the country.34 They found that Ireland required a system that would be available and affordable to all classes.35 During that gap, only one initiative sought to make any significant improvements to education in Ireland, for those who could not afford one.

After various attempts at establishing a satisfactory system, the Kildare Place Society, also known as The Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland, was founded in 1811.

This was a progressive project that combined the efforts of Quaker, Protestant, and Catholic private philanthropists.36 They aimed to provide a non-denominational education to poor children in Ireland.37 Additionally, they repaired school houses as well as provided qualified teachers and supplies for poor students across the country.38 They were fairly successful with the establishment of 381 schools by 1820. But, the non-denominational aspect of the institution raised suspicions between both Protestants and Catholics. Neither Protestants nor Catholics trusted the other to provide a truly non-denominational education to children. Thus, Hedge

33 Catholic Directory 1848, “St. Mary’s Boarding School,” in Women in Ireland, 1800-1918, ed. Maria Luddy (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), 105-106. 34 J. E. G. de Montmorency, State Intervention in English Education: A Short History from the Earliest Times down to 1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902), 128. 35 Moore, An Unwritten Chapter in the History of Education, 18-19. 36 Harold Hislop, “Inspecting a Doomed Non-Denominational School System: The Inspectorate of the Kildare Place Society in Ireland, 1811-1831,” in Paedagogica Historica no. 35, sup 1 (1999), 177. 37 "Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor of Ireland, Committee Room, Dublin: for payment of £5,999.2.0 towards support of institution," Chief Secretary of Ireland's Office Registered Papers, 1818. 38 N. R. Tempest, “Some Sources for the History of Teacher-Training in England and ,” in British Journal of Educational Studies 9, no. 1 (November, 1960), 60. 23

Schools and religious institutions continued to be the norm for any Irish family who could afford it. By the 1820s, families of three to four-hundred thousand children had paid for an education.39

Though an improvement to previous years, Ireland’s population in 1841 was 6.5 million.40 With, roughly, only four to six percent of the population receiving any kind of formal education, the struggle to improve living standards was felt across the country, regardless of gender. The efforts of the Kildare Place Society ultimately failed, but their methods surrounding teacher training and non-denominational principles went on to create the framework for the National School system in 1831.41

The National School system was the first step in providing some level of education for all

Irish citizens, though it was mostly run by Catholics for Catholics. The curriculum, by and large, was in line with what Hedge and Convent schools had already been teaching. Within this initial state system, girls learned to read, write, and how to perform basic arithmetic. There was a heavy emphasis on domestic skills. Girls from low-income families were provided with the absolute minimum level of education in order to prepare them for their position in life, dictated by both class and gender.42

The most dramatic changes aimed at girls and women in education occurred fairly quickly after the establishment of the state system. The Irish Education Act of 1892 secured the right to an education for Irish girls by making attendance compulsory for all primary age girls

(ages 4 to 12), placing their education requirements at the same level as boys. As female

39 "Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor of Ireland, Committee Room, Dublin: for payment of £5,999.2.0 towards support of institution." Chief Secretary of Ireland's Office Registered Papers, 1818. 40 "Population 1841-2011," An Phriomh-Oifig Staidrimn (Central Statistics Office), http://www.cso.ie/multiquicktables/quickTables.aspx?id=cna13. 41 Hislop, “Inspecting a Doomed Non-Denominational School System,” 178. 42 Luddy, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918, 89. 24 attendance in primary schools increased, there was a significant number of girls who desired to continue their education through the second level (age 16). As a result, the Ladies’ Collegiate

School in Belfast was established in 1859 by Margaret Byers. Three years later, the Queen’s

Institute formed and, within the following five years, Alexandra College was founded by Ann

Jellicoe. All three of these schools provided an education that was similar in quality to that of the male secondary students, as well as provide vocational training.43

Ann Jellico and Isabella Tod were two key figures who opened pivotal institutions for girls, and initiated the campaign to improve education for girls at the secondary and university levels. Though these women focused on improving education for middle-class girls, their efforts to insert women into higher education institutions dramatically changed the culture around a woman’s place in Irish society. Jellicoe, a Quaker woman, was one of the first to truly advocate for women’s education, regardless of class. Throughout the 1850s, she opened several schools to teach girls of all classes embroidery, sewing, and crocheting. Her goal was to provide girls with advanced skills that could assist them in finding employment. Quakers were thought to be more cultured and open-minded when it came to egalitarian practices. By evidence of the curricula of

Quaker schools during nineteenth century Ireland, they were more concerned with the intellect and potential of a person than with their class.

One of Jellico’s most important opportunities arrived in 1861 when she was invited to speak at a National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (NAPSS) meeting. This

English association admitted men and women equally and was where many social and political problems that women faced were first discussed. Here, she presented a paper that focused on

43 Luddy, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918, 90. 25 protecting working-class women against factory owners who refused to pay women a fair wage, forced them to work in crowded factories, and deprived them of access to fresh air. Ann V.

O’Connor, an Irish women’s historian noted, in her mini biography on Jellicoe, that Jellicoe’s comments and the relationships she forged in NAPPS directly influenced the establishment of an eating house that gave women free meals. Jellicoe went on to argue that women had a right to obtain an education and training that would allow them to move into a better profession. Her involvement in NAPSS introduced her to women like Mary Carpenter, Bessie Parkers, and

Emily Faithful, all of whom had organizations dedicated to the betterment of the lives of women created out of their involvement with NAPSS.44

Through the association, Jellicoe met Ada Corlett. Together they founded the Irish

Society for Promoting the Training and Employment of Educated Women in 1861. This was the first organization that assisted women in gaining employment. Three years later, it transformed into the Queen’s Institute. This institute began as a technical training school for girls to learn basic trade skills. Eventually, it turned to providing girls with secondary and higher education.

To Jellicoe’s dismay, Corlett’s desire to have the Institute open to only middle-class girls turned into reality due to the sheer costs of operating the school. Though the Institute continued to focus on improving prospects for middle-class girls, Jellicoe went on to be credited as the founder of

Alexandra College in 1866. As the first institution to be called a College in Ireland, it was also the first to pursue providing women with a university style education. Jellicoe died in 1880, right as the College began preparing girls to pursue degrees at the Royal University of Ireland.

Alexandra College was also highly influential when it came time for Trinity College in Dublin to

44 Ann V O’Connor, “Anne Jellicoe,” in Women, Power, and Consciousness in 19th-Century Ireland: Eight Biographical Studies ed. Mary Cullen and Maria Luddy (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 125-132. 26 admit women in 1904. Even with the prestigious title and proactive vision, girls were still not receiving a proper primary education, regardless of their class. To combat this, Jellicoe established a tutoring system amongst students in order to raise their standards. With a new curriculum in place that included English, math, geography, and history, girls were more prepared to sit for exams and receive degrees. During Jellicoe’s lifetime, Alexandra College followed in the footsteps of the Queen’s Institute by catering to middle and upper class girls.45

However, as the College grew in prestige, it became a core mission to provide an education to students regardless of class or religion.46

Isabella Tod was a pioneer activist in the campaign for equal education for girls as well as for the fight to allow women to receive a university education, though she began her work after Jellicoe had established herself. She was highly critical of the “useless” role of women in

Irish society. The most notable criticism that she had was from a pamphlet she published with the National Union for Improving the Education of Women in 1874. In this, she emphasized that it was unrealistic for all daughters to marry, and for that marriage to be a happy one. In her view, it was irresponsible for parents to deprive their daughters of an education. She believed that a parent’s duty was not to ensure that daughters would marry, but that the girls would be able to

“become whatever Heaven meant them to be.”47 Demanding that parents allow their daughter to find and nurture her agency demonstrated the growing nature of this manifestation of feminism through proto-feminists.48

45 O’Connor, “Anne Jellicoe,” 134-142. 46 "Admissions," Alexandra College Dublin. https://alexandracollege.eu/admissionsscholarship-application/. 47 Tod’s italicization. 48 Luddy, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918, 108-110. 27

In a speech published in the 1873 Journal of the Women’s Education Union, Todd was adamant that if women did not fight for their education now, then the next opportunity would not come for another fifty years. She also evoked a nationalist sentiment by arguing that if Irish women did not have access to higher education, they would be worse off than the English women who have already received a significant amount of endowments for schools. Though there were not significant campaigns for independence at this time, referencing the position of

Irish women in comparison to English women would have resonated strongly with all Irish people, regardless of gender or class. Tod’s concern did not just lie in the access to a higher education or with the desire to be more progressive than England, but with the quality of the education provided. She was quick to point out that the exams girls were permitted to sit for did nothing but test what they could learn on their own. The exams did not provide girls with the learning experience that their male counterparts had access to. Further, she proposed that the

Queen’s Institute should be the leader of the initiative due to their status as the highest ranking university in the country, at the time.49 This was remedied by the Intermediate Act. Once passed in 1878 by Westminster which sought to improve student attendance and educational standards.

Tod, along with Margaret Byers, campaigned to ensure that women would benefit from the Act on the same level as male students. Funding by the British government was the most important component of the Act. Not only were teachers awarded prizes for exam scores, as an incentive to provide the best education they could for female students, grants were distributed to both female and male students. This alleviated much of the financial burden for working-class parents and provided girls with an opportunity they would otherwise not have. 50

49 Isabella M.S. Tod, “The Education of Women in The Journal of the Women’s Education Union 1873,” in Women in Ireland: A Documentary History, ed. Maria Luddy (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), 140. 50 Luddy, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918, 90-91. 28

Ann Maria Haslam, a lesser known advocate for education reform, worked around the same time as Jellico and Todd. Specifically, she worked with Jellico at The Queen’s Institute.

While at the Institute, she founded the Association of Schoolmistresses and Other Ladies

Interested in Irish Education in 1882. This association monitored political and administrative proceedings in order to protect the educational interests of women. While Jellico and Todd focused on secondary and university education as a whole, Haslam had her sights set on reforming the medical field. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, she campaigned heavily for women to be able to obtain medical degrees. The Medical Registration Act of 1858 only permitted individuals to practice medicine if they were registered with specific British examination boards that explicitly banned women. As many women, especially rural women, acted as healthcare providers and midwives in their communities, they were exposed to financial and legal consequences by not being admitted to any examination board. After eighteen years of heavy campaigning, Haslam’s efforts came to fruition in 1876 when Parliament amended their

Act to allow women to obtain medical degrees.51

One of the most significant changes these women made concerned public opinion. While, initially, many Irish citizens and government officials were opposed to girls sitting for exams, not necessarily earning degrees, a friendly sense of competition began to form in counties once results of the exams were posted in local newspapers. Grassroots educational institutions created by women like Todd and Jellicoe had to show that women were capable of learning and excelling in school before the general population and governments believed them. University education, unlike the previous levels of education, saw much more of a resistance from the Irish

51 Mary Cullen Owens, Women, Power, and Consciousness in 19th Century Ireland: Eight Biographical Studies (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 168-169. 29 government. The fear of women abandoning their “natural sphere” of the home had been a common concern as the state educational system formalized the lower levels of education. As women began demanding a place in the University system, that fear continued to grow. Male medical professionals claimed that higher education damaged women’s health, women’s brains were too small to carry so much knowledge, the reproductive organs would disintegrate, and that women would no longer be willing to perform their marital and maternal duties. While there was a significant number of women and schools who advocated for primary (ages 4-12) and secondary (ages 12-16) education, there was still only a small number of middle-class women who advocated for access to a university education.52

Though there had been several attempts to reach a compromise on the topic of university education for women over the course of the nineteenth-century by the Irish government, the

Catholic and Protestant Churches, and private philanthropists, no significant changes materialized until the establishment of the non-denominational Royal University of Ireland, in

1879. The university established the right for women to sit for exams and earn a degree on par with men. This was due, in large part, to the work of Tod. Her role in the movement was so prominent that once the Royal University of Ireland was established, Tod formed a committee through the Ladies’ Institute in Belfast within the year that ensured women would be included and treated fairly.53 Her committee, the University’s progressive attitude, and groundwork laid by Jellicoe assisted in creating a precedent for the other major universities in Ireland to begin

52 Luddy, Women in Ireland, 1800-1918, 91. 53 [Ladies’ Institute, Victoria College, Belfast], “Minute Book,” in Women in Ireland: A Documentary History, ed. Maria Luddy (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), 141. 30 accepting women; most notably: the Queen’s Colleges, Trinity College, and the Catholic

University. By 1908, women had established their right to a full university education.54

The most important figures in Ireland’s first wave of feminism came as a direct result of opening education to women. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, one of the most notable figures in women’s suffrage and Irish independence, was heavily influenced by the work of women like

Jellicoe and Tod, even attending schools that were founded by them. While completing her

Masters of Arts at the Royal University of Ireland, 25 year old Skeffington had a deepened interest in women’s equality. In 1902, she wrote an article in The New Ireland Review on the university question as a reply to another woman, Lilian Daly. Daly was hesitant about fully opening universities to women, though it is not clear what her education level was or if she was currently benefitting from education reform. She argued that women and men required different curricula, as they were inherently different on biologic and intellectual levels. Daly went on to emphasize that the home is a woman’s “truest sphere.” However, she did provide an interesting argument in claiming women’s education should not be a decision made by men. She implied that women should be active in making the decision to either emancipate or limit other women in society.55 Skeffington argued that Daly’s points against women’s access to higher education was not practical, had no insight, did not possess sympathy, and lacked original thought. Skeffington went on to argue that a university degree was not just a means to a commercial end. Its purpose was to mold a person and their intellect and to widen their outlook. To deny a woman access to this opportunity, according to Skeffington would put Daly, and all women, at a disadvantage in a

54 Judith Harford, The Opening of University Education to Women in Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008), 74-75. 55 Lilian Daly, “Women and the University Question,” in The New Ireland Review (April, 1902), 74-80. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433081643698. 31 critical point in their intellectual and emotional development.56 This reflected Tod’s 1873 speech concerning the critical nature of providing Irish women with an education. Though Skeffington did not specifically cite Tod, she would have been familiar with Tod’s work. Skeffington concluded her article with, “Men will not stand aside to allow woman her free choices as to whether or not she will enter upon their ground. She must herself strive to attain her desire step by step, using the already attained in the pursuit of the attainable.”57 This early work by

Skeffington demonstrates how the manifestation of feminism surrounding education reform for all Irish children provided future revolutionaries with the tools they required to make broader social and political changes.

Access to a quality education was a struggle felt by most Irish citizens who sought an education. As philanthropy and social consciousness grew throughout the nineteenth century,

Irish activist women were able to insert themselves into the discussion and claim their right to an equal education. Due to its critical role of providing women with the public presence to break out of the private sphere, it cannot be passed over in the process of tracking and quantifying feminism in Ireland. Though the goal of female education, initially, was to produce the best

Catholic wives and mothers, the opportunity for personal growth and development provided by education reform directly aided the movement of women in the first wave of feminism during the first quarter of the twentieth century by providing them with the weapon of education and gradually opening the minds of the Irish government and society to the prospect of women as full citizens of Ireland. While these activist women did not identify as feminists due to the word not existing yet, they may be categorized as proto-feminists who advocated for equality but did not

56 Hanna Sheehy, “Women and the University Question,” in The New Ireland Review (May, 1902), 148-151. 57 Hanna Sheehy, “Women and the University Question,” 151. 32 have the concept of “feminism” to work off of. As the country moves into the twentieth-century, the demand for equality will see a rise of women who identified as feminists.

33

Chapter Three: A “Wave” and “Manifestation” Meet: The Irish War for Independence and Suffrage

Coming off the heels of education reform, many Irish women had felt a new sense of agency that encouraged them to pursue further rights in public society. Women who came of age in the 1910s and 1920s had seen the work put in by feminists before them in order to allow the next generation to have access to an education. After activist women made the first break out of the private sphere and into academia, the next generation of activist women now had a stronger argument when it came to claiming their rights as full citizens of Ireland. With globalism beginning to take hold, Irish activist women were able to then identify themselves as feminists.

The growing sense of nationalism throughout the country provided feminist women with the perfect vehicle to boost male support for suffrage and a number of future campaigns.

Rebellion and the involvement of women in those rebellions was not new to the Irish people. Irish resistance to outside rule dates back to the invasion of the Normans in 1169.

Isolated rebellions motivated by burdensome taxes and other economic grievances were common, until the Act of Union was passed in 1800 in an attempt to absorb Ireland fully into the

United Kingdom. With this, the British government, which was dominated by Protestants, passed a number of penal laws that discriminated against Catholics and, thus, most of the Irish people.

This generated political opposition more than any other pieces of legislation. While there were rebellions against land laws, taxes, and the lack of Irish land owners, the direct discrimination against Irish citizens through the Act of Union fostered a sense of unity amongst a great deal of

Irish men and women. As a result, some Irish began demanding a free and independent nation of their own. This created rebellion with nationalism as a driving force for a number of Irish citizens rather than a simple distaste for the British. Women became integral to the continuation 34 of this new Irish nationalism after The Land League, a group of tenant farmers who had been robbed of their land, was declared illegal. In 1881, the Ladies Land League was formed as a response to the criminalization of the men’s organization. This was the first large scale woman’s organization that had formed in Ireland.58 The last time women had been active in rebellions was thirty-three years prior, in 1848 during a rent rate strike.59 Irish citizens were still feeling economic effects from the Famine, as well as rising tension between Protestants and Catholics due to the Act of Union which rose tensions between the two countries.

Nationalist women were the most visible as writers when nationalism took hold in

Ireland. So much so, that several writers for the radical newspaper, The Nation, were female.

These women were extremely active in writing both prose and poetry for the publication as well as for any other outlet that was willing to print them, whether it be under pseudonyms or their legal name. Writing was how women had the most influence, as it was viewed as an acceptable activity for women by the patriarchal culture as writing tended to not interfere with domestic duties. Many women also used this outlet to discuss their roles in Irish society as a whole.

During the 1848 rebellion, a woman writing in The Nation, under the byline of “Eva,” wrote,

…what is virtue in man is virtue also in woman. Virtue is of no sex. A Coward woman is as base as a coward man. It is not unfeminine to take sword or gun, if sword or gun is required.60

When it came to protests, women tended to be the only ones who organized. This was the case when the nationalist group , who worked in conjunction with The Nation, faced

58 Cal McCarthy, Cumann na mBann and the Irish Revolution (Cork: The Collins Press, 2014), 5-8. 59 Richard Davis, “Young Ireland,” in Ohio University Encyclopedia of 1848 Rebellions (2004). 60 Jan Cannavan, “Revolution in Ireland, Evolution in Women’s Rights: Irish Women in 1798 and 1848,” in Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women, and Wicked Hags, ed. Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2004), 38. 35 legal persecution. When the Young Ireland leader was arrested on the charge of treason, convicted, and transported to Tasmania, women supporters worked to keep the organization going and protect the men that were being hunted by the British government.61 When the rebellion became violent, women were visible in at least one incident. In the July rebellion of

1848, people of Ballyingarry in County Tipperary attempted to prevent British authorities from arresting key leaders of Young Ireland. It was poorly organized and the citizens were not adequately armed, but witnesses noted that the crowd contained all ages and sexes and women outnumbered men.62

Though many women served as active participants and writers in Irish nationalism prior to the twentieth century, their primary role was that of a symbol, which was not necessarily empowering for women. Across the board, Irish men and women writers, nuns, and political leaders who left records discussing their young lives recounted the importance of their mother.

When it came to writing on nationalism and Catholic Ireland, mothers were consistently placed on a pedestal as symbols for what Ireland was. Irish mothers and by extension Ireland, were

Catholic, strong, powerful, loving, and passionate.63

The Irish War for Independence

At the turn of the twentieth century, activist Irish women found themselves in a position to make a change in their lives as citizens. After fighting for their place in the education system, many women felt a new sense of agency. The symbol of Ireland as a woman shifted from that of

61 Young Ireland was a political and cultural movement in the nineteenth century that was related to the newspaper The Nation. They were one of the first organizations to campaign for an independent Ireland. 62 Cannavan, “Revolution in Ireland,” 39. 63 Hasia R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 18. 36 a passive woman who represented the Virgin Mary to a new, young heroine. She claimed a desire for agency and demanded her independence. A wave of feminism was about to sweep across Ireland. As nationalist movements gained traction, and the suffrage movements in

England and the United States were gaining traction, Irish feminist women felt that it was a time for them to have an active voice rather than continue to be symbols. One of the first pushes made by feminist women in the fight for an independent Ireland was the establishment of Bean na hÉireann (Women of Ireland), a woman’s magazine founded in 1908 by Helena Monoly. This magazine favored nationalism and was written mostly by women but it was not a feminist paper.64 The paper stood for the “freedom for Our Nation and the complete removal of all disabilities to our sex.”65 While this statement does support feminism, the paper did not explicitly identify as a feminist one.66 The publication was able to reach home-makers as well as women involved in political activities by working to balance the feminine with public life. It served as an outlet for Irish writers to promote their causes and express their hopes for an Ireland free of

British rule.67 The editorial section was where topics of nationalism, social issues, and suffrage received the most attention, as it gave Irish writers and everyday Irish women a voice.68 Its mother organization, Inghinidhe na hÉireann, worked to do the same by seeking a new nationalist ideology that gave women a more prominent role in Irish society, as nationalists tended to be sympathetic to .69 A few years later, a more direct approach was taken with the formation of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) in 1913, after the unexplained demise of

64 Ann Matthews, Renegades (Dublin: Mercier Press, 2010), 65-66. 65 Tom Stokes, “A Most Seditious Lot: The Feminist Press, 1896-1916,” The , March 2, 2012. 66 Matthews, Renegades, 65-66. 67 Brittany Colombus, “Bean na hÉireann: Feminism and Nationalism in an Irish Journal, 1908-1911,” Voice Novae Chapman University Historical Review, no. 1 (2009), 3. 68 Matthews, Renegades, 65-66. 69 Colombus, “Bean na hÉireann,” 3. 37

Bean na hÉireann in 1911. The ICA’s goal was to protect blue collar worker as well as fight for nationalism in the country.70 Their motto was just as direct as Bean na hÉireann’s. They stood

“For Men and Women Equally The Rights of Citizenship; For Men and Women Equally The

Duties of Citizenship.”71

Women in the nationalist movement, in the early days especially, cannot be painted with one brush. Their differences were stark. But, what made them unique, particularly in the Western world, in the fight for an independent Ireland is that they all had two common goals, independence and suffrage. The split came in how they wanted to go about achieving these goals. There were women who were skeptical of nationalism. Some felt that until suffrage was achieved, women would always be on the fringe of political life and, if they did not achieve suffrage before independence, they would never gain the vote. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, a founding member of the Irish Women's Franchise League was a key player who shared skepticism.72 When the organization was founded in 1908, this debate was played out in national newspapers.73 The Irish Citizen, one of the most widely read papers at the time, went as far as publishing posters that said “Votes for Women Now! Damn Your War”.74 As the possibility of war became more and more realistic, women chose to put aside their differences for the good of the country. In prioritizing independence over their own civic and political rights, suffragists

70 Sinead McCoole, No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years, 1900-1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 28. 71 Stokes, “A Most Seditious Lot” 72 McCoole, No Ordinary Women, 28. 73 Matthews, Renegades, 65-66. 74 Rosemary Cullen Owens, “Pacifism, Militarism, and Republicanism” in A Social History of Women in Ireland: 1870-1970 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 2005), 128-129. 38 hoped that in taking part in fighting for their country, they would be able to gain equality under the new Republic.75

As early as 1914, nationalist women across the country were meeting to discuss their role in the war for independence and how they planned to best arm the men. The group that started these discussions was known as Cumann na mBan. They had also created the “Defense of

Ireland” fund to being raising money as early as possible. By October of 1914, there were over sixty branches of these organizations.76 Their numbers grew rapidly throughout the campaign and War for Independence. According to Ann Matthews in her monograph, Renegades, by 1918, there were six hundred and fifty branches. Once the war ended in 1921, there were 839 across

Ireland.77 Cumann na mBan gave women the opportunity to make real change in the pursuit of nationalism. Notable members included Mary Colum who spoke for many of the branches - an

Anglo-Irish Nationalist woman named Honorable Mary Spring Rice, the daughter of Lord

Monteagle, a county Landlord, who smuggled weapons and ammunition from

Germany to arm republican men, and Florence McCarthy, an organizer for Cumann na mBan who travelled around Ireland in 1915 to encourage the establishment of more branches, which then helped train women in first aid, signaling, and drilling.78

In an article published in the journal Irish Freedom in 1913, right as Cumann na mBan was forming, an anonymous woman from southern Ireland stated, in the first line, that the country needed the help of women. The article addressed women who read about the call for the help of men and felt that the war had nothing to do with them. She pointed out various instances

75 Eve Morrison, "The Bureau of Military History and Female Republican Activism, 1913-23,” in Gender and Power in Irish History, edited by Maryann Valiuils (Cork: Irish Academic Press, 2008), 70. 76 McCoole, No Ordinary Women, 28-29. 77 Matthews, Renegades, 289 78 McCoole, No Ordinary Women, 29-31 39 in history where women were able to fight and bring significant change. More importantly, the author did not alienate women who could not or did not want to fight. The woman emphasized that doing anything, from reviving the Irish language to supporting local industry was helpful in hindering the British hold on Ireland. Finally, the woman addressed the fear of women appearing

“unfeminine” when involving themselves in politics by arguing that “there is nothing unwomanly in active patriotism.”79

The greatest indication of women's ability to ban together to fight for independence came in 1916 when Cumann na mBan and the military council Inghinidhe na hÉireann joined forces with the and the Irish Citizen Army to become the Army of the Irish, despite each having radically different beliefs on the place of suffrage within the fight for independence.80 Much of this stemmed from the original disagreement between republican feminists about whether suffrage or independence from Great Britain needed be the priority.

As the war began with the of 1916, nationalist women found themselves, officially, doing work that was deemed “suitable” for their gender. Not all women felt that this was the only place for them in the war and were, frankly, insulted by being kept on the fringes.

Sheehy Skeffington expressed her frustration in The Irish Citizen writing:

Since the war began, with one notable exception, do not think any position demanding the use of brains has been entrusted to a woman. Women have been asked to knit, to nurse, to collect tickets, to deliver letters, to make munitions, to do clerical work of every kind, but from any work in which they could utilize their intellectual gifts or show any powers of initiative, they have been and are rigorously exclude. Women ought to protest and rebel against this criminally stupid disregard of a rich fund of

79 Southwoman, “To The Young Women of Ireland,” in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, edited by Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995) 35-37. 80 Joseph McKenna, Guerilla Warfare in the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921 (Jefferson: McFarland & Company Inc., 2011), 111. 40

intellectual energy. There is no patriotism in passive submission to such blundering dominance.81

Sheehy Skeffington's opinion was much more hardline than most other women, as the article that ran in 1913 calling for the assistance of women in any way possible illustrates. One popular way nationalist women showed their support was through protesting. It was not a traditionally feminine thing to do but it was a happy medium for those women who did not wish to wrap bandages or have bandages wrapped around them. Protests are where the most women were seen in terms of photographic and journalistic evidence. They routinely gathered in large numbers outside of jails, making headlines. Women had a large presence when it came to the protesting of

Irish prisoners of war being wrongfully killed and in the demand for the release of Irish nationalists from . Women also took part in supplying food and shelter for those in the (IRA). Cumann na mBan began their involvement with this sort of work in late 1919. They accepted the responsibility of transporting food and supplies to

IRA training camps as well as organizing safe houses for men on the run.82

There were women who took on roles typically meant for men, as well as women. James

Connolly, an Irish Socialist leader in the Easter Rising, took advantage of the women involved in the ICA, according to Constance Markievicz, one of the most notable members of Cumann na mBan.83 Before the Easter Rising, he addressed the Army as a whole stating that all were to take part in the training and preparation for the Rising. If volunteers were unable to successfully complete the required training, they had no business taking part in the fighting, regardless of gender. Connolly's female volunteers were seen by fellow nationalists as soldiers rather than frail

81 Owens, “Pacifism,” 128-129. 82 Matthews, Renegades, 248-249. 83 McKenna, Guerilla Warfare, 111-115. 41 women playing dress-up.84 Reminiscing on her father’s work with women, Nora Connolly

O’Brian saw him as an “apostle” for women’s rights. He believed that if women were present in a campaign, the campaign was sure to succeed. was notorious for encouraging women to become involved at every level, from providing medical care to bearing arms to having a place in the army council.85

The women most involved with the ICA under Connolly were members of Cumann na mBan, and were extensively trained for whatever came their way. On Easter morning, these women found themselves fairly balanced with men in the work they were assigned. Markievicz recalled in her letters from prison that on Easter morning, as a staff lieutenant, she was in command of digging trenches and building barricades. Aside from holding leadership positions in the Rising, republican women took an active role in the fighting. , the only female casualty from the Rising, was an expert markswoman and sniper. Before taking an active role on the ground, she joined the Glasgow branch of Cumann na mBan. She then moved to

Ireland while smuggling explosives. While returning fire on British snipers during the Rising, she was wounded three times. By the end of the Rising, over seventy women were taken prisoner where all but twelve of the women were released soon after. The other women continued to be detained.86 The arrest of only seventy-seven women is quite significant as there were at least 200 women who were involved in the Rising.87 Markievicz, as a commander was tried and sentenced to death but after a general amnesty of prisoners by the British government in 1917, she was freed and went on to become the first woman elected into the British Parliament. Despite the

84 McKenna, Guerilla Warfare, 111-115 85 Nora Connolly O’Brien, “Women in Ireland, Their Part in the Revolutionary Struggle, 1932,” in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 154-156. 86 McKenna, Guerilla Warfare, 111-115 87 McCoole, No Ordinary Women, 49. 42 arrests, at least twenty women who were active in the ICA remained on active duty until 1923.88

By taking an active role in the war, these women took an enormous risk. Homes were raided, women were imprisoned and shot at and/or injured and killed, and there is evidence that sexual violence was a weapon that was actively used on both sides, though it was not an official policy.89 They knew the risks and they stood next to the men and fulfilled their duty, regardless.

In interviews after the war, male veterans noted that there were cases of women keeping their composure much better than the men around them during the fighting. It was common to see women transporting or carrying guns and guiding men to safety while being shot at.90 While nationalist women did this work, they were belittled by unionist newspapers in order to discredit their fight for suffrage and independence. The Weekly Irish Times wrote that women during

Easter Week were only serving food in the dining room of the Post office and, “were dressed in the finest clothes, and wore knives and pistols in their belts.”91 In an attempt to smear the republican cause, this became a common depiction of women who participated in the war in

Unionist propaganda. It was easier to believe that a woman's only role was to serve rather than see them on the frontlines. A woman named Catherine Byrne challenged this claim by loyalists when she abandoned her original post, one that was out of harm’s way, in order to join a garrison. After climbing in a back window during the fighting, she tore up her petticoat in order to use it as a bandage for a man who had a bomb explode near him.92

Some of the most important work nationalist women did prior to the rising was smuggling arms into the country for republicans. Mary Rice, for example, was able to

88 McKenna, Guerilla, 111-115. 89 Ryan, “’In the line of fire,’ 48. 90 Owens, “Pacifism,” 76. 91 McCoole, No Ordinary Women, 41. 92 McCoole, No Ordinary Women, 41. 43 successfully smuggle arms into the country. She used her yacht to smuggle nine hundred guns and twenty-nine thousand rounds of ammunition from Germany in 1914. In a diary entry on the event, she described how German sailors helped her load the weapons onto her boat in the dead of night. They had filled the saloon, the cabin, and the passage before adding another layer. The cockpit was filled to the brim with ammunition. Once arriving in Ireland, the only form of communication the boat had with the volunteers on shore was Mary's bright red skirt to signal that they had arrived so as to not alert British troops or police in the area.93

Women were routinely left out of the revolution in official government documents. The

Irish Parliamentary Party refused to let women into their organizations. Initially, the only way women were able to help was through the Irish Citizen Army founded by James Connolly, who assigned fifteen women to combat positions during the Easter Rising in 1916. Women were perceived as suspicious by a great deal of men when they expressed interest in the politics of men and were, therefore, not to be trusted. Republican propaganda pushed the image of women as the “keepers of the hearth, instillers of the faith, willing to sacrifice their livelihood, their husbands, and their sons in the cause of Irish Freedom.” In the early days of the war, nationalist women did uphold this image. Daniel Mulvihill, a volunteer who advocated extensively for his female relatives' involvement stated that his mother spared everything she had and that her house was always full of strangers fighting for independence who needed food or a place to sleep.94

Despite making great sacrifices for the cause, many Irish men still viewed women as lesser, even those men who were sympathetic to the causes of women. Ina Connolly, one of James

93 Mary Spring Rice, “The Gun-Running,” in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 49-51. 94 Eve Morrison, “The Bureau of Military History and Female Republican Activism, 1913-23,” in Gender and Power in Irish History, ed. Maryann Gialanella Valiulis (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), 60-61. 44

Connolly’s daughter’s, wrote in a biography on her father how she and the women in her family were treated during the arrival of arms from Mary Rice's ship. When she had heard that the guns had come in from Howth without her sister or Markievicz, they were hurt and believed their being left out made them appear as if they were unable to be trusted, especially since they had been involved in every other aspect of the fight for independence. She told her sister, “…had I been a boy I should not have been looked over.”95 She knew that gender was the reason the three women who were available were ignored while the men and boys, who the women were with hours earlier, were called upon. After being left out, Ina felt that she had to take the next opportunity given to her to prove her worth. The next morning she became the first woman to run guns to the North. With this came great risks if she were to be caught. She had to use her position as a woman to disguise herself as a girl simply looking for a ride home for the holidays with a boy she met at a dance.96

The risks nationalist women took in smuggling arms were quite real. Though women had not been executed like many men for involvement in the wars, their price was still almost as high. In a description of her arrest for smuggling ten rifles, four revolvers, and five hundred rounds of ammunition, Linda Kearns, a nurse and member of Cumann na mBan, recalled being caught by the while transporting weapons.97 After Kearns and her two male comrades were pulled over with the weapons in her car, the Black and Tans began shooting at them. After, the Black and Tans were told a woman was in the car by one of Kearns’ companions, the Black and Tans said they were not able to let her live to tell of what had

95 Ina Connolly, “Had I been a Boy,” in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 52. 96 Connolly, “Had I been a Boy,” 51-52. 97 The Black and Tans were soldiers who were brought to Ireland, beginning in 1918, by Westminster in order to fight against Irish Republicans during the War for Independence. 45 happened. Once the shooting had ceased, she was taken with her men to the barracks in Sligo.

She was thrown into solitary and tormented with the Black and Tans bringing her companions by her door, shooting into the air to make her think that her partners had been killed. The Black and

Tans would then asked if they should kill her next. After a night in the barracks, for her involvement in smuggling arms, Kearns was sentenced to ten years in prison.98 Another account comes from Ethne Coyle who was the president of Cumann na mBan in 1926. She recalled the

Black and Tans raiding her house in the middle of the afternoon. At four a.m., they returned and arrested her. Though they had found no documents or arms on her or in her house, she was sentenced to one year in prison simply for being a known volunteer with the ICA.99

The role of women taking on small tasks or smuggling arms underwent a significant change in 1919 when the use of guerrilla warfare became a preferred tactic. With this shift, women took on a larger role. They were used for intelligence work, scouting, supply and transfer of arms, as well as being a line of communication during combat. Former Irish Volunteers who have been interviewed on what they experienced all confirmed that “The Cumann na mBan, the

Irish Republican Women's Parliamentary Organization used a rifle and kept the kettles boiling as occasion demanded.”100 Nationalist women gladly took on both roles simultaneously in order to fight for independence and prove their worth as citizens.

In 1920, the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act increased the involvement of nationalist women as well as their importance in the movement. The Act aimed to increase conviction of nationalist rebels while avoiding the use of marital law. This meant that nationalists had to do

98 Annie Smithson, “Arrest,” in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995). 99-101 99 Eithne Coyle, “Survivors,” in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 101-102 100 Owens, “Pacifism,” 61. 46 everything possible to keep a low profile. Part of that was recognizing that women had the ability to move freely without drawing attention or suspicion. It was normal to see a woman with a long skirt or pushing prams with children so it was easier to hide ammunition in these ordinary items.

It even became routine for volunteers to pose as courting couples when preparing to ambush a site.101 With this advantage, Cumann na mBan became the group responsible for creating and protecting the IRA dumps, as well as planning ambushes.102 Many women also worked outside of Cumann na mBan and answered directly to officers in the IRA that they knew personally, or were related to. Nationalist women often used their jobs to help in even the smallest ways. One woman, Annie Barret, worked in the post office to relay information or delay it as needed.

During the raid on the Mallow Barracks in 1920, all of the telephone wires were supposed to be cut but the wire connecting the barracks to the Post Office was kept intact through an error.

During the attack, whenever someone called, requesting back-up, she said that she was unable to hear them. She also claimed faulty wires as the reason she was not able to relay a message about

British troops arriving so that the IRA could get away with stolen artillery.103

When men wrote about their experiences in the war, patriarchal attitudes concerning gender were ever present, even amongst the most progressive. Though women volunteers had been described as calm, useful, and brave throughout the war, men still wrote about tensions concerning the blurred gender lines created by the war for independence, as well as the Civil

War. As nationalist women took on more active roles, there were new threats and concerns that needed to be addressed, including assault and removing the mother, who often manages the home alone, in order to place her on the frontlines. Male leadership, and women volunteers, had

101 Owens, “Pacifism,” 61. 102 Ann Matthews, Renegades: Irish Republican Women, 1900-1922 (Dublin: Mercier Press, 2010), 249. 103 Owens, “Pacifism,” 62-63. 47 to decide if the new threats were worth having women present in the war. One major arguments for keeping women out of the war at all levels was the threat of sexual assault. The , a nationalist paper, published accounts of women who reported being raped or sexually assaulted by members of the Black and Tans or other forces of the Crown. One report, published in April of 1921, told of two accusations by women of British forces assaulting them. However, The Irish

Bulletin was a propaganda newspaper. This made it difficult for accusations to be grounded in fact, as it was with many accusations on both sides.104 Whether the accusations were grounded in fact or not was irrelevant when Irish people were faced with constant raids and ambushes by the Black and Tans. By accusing Black and Tans of sexually assaulting Irish women, patriarchal republicans were able to use it to their advantage. On one hand, the rape of Irish women by

Crown forces was a symbol for what Britain was doing to the Irish people by withholding their freedom. By extension, they were placing women back into the role of being a symbol for the nation. On the other hand, the threat of rape and assault is an extremely effective argument to make when trying to encourage women to remain in the private sphere. A woman who stayed in the home and did not step out of her proper place did not have any chance of being harmed by

Crown or IRA forces, according to the propaganda. Though the threat of sexual assault may have been a fabricated one, it may have deterred a number of women from taking an active role in the war, but there were still hundreds of women who believed that the chance at independence was worth the risk.

104 Marie Coleman, “Women escaped the worst of the brutalities in the War for Independence,” The Irish Examiner, November 27, 2015. 48

Suffrage in Ireland

The immediacy of nationalist women’s actions in the revolution should not be taken as the universal Irish attitude on how to gain independence. The largest split in attitude between women was on the topic of suffrage. Many women’s attitudes on suffrage in Ireland are comparable to American ’s attitudes of the 1910s. Both countries were facing wars as well as largely patriarchal societies that were resistant to change. One strategy that activist women took in fighting for suffrage was to align it with the nationalist movement and demand suffrage be built into the foundation of an independent Ireland. The other strategy was to put nationalism first and hope that suffrage will come later, in a natural manner. These attitudes were present in Ireland and the United States, though the United States was more concerned with war- time patriotism than nationalism. The difference here being that Ireland’s concern lies in nation building while the United States’ patriotism is centered on the idea of being a good American.

However, as a movement, suffrage in Ireland relied on the fire of nationalism and activist women’s involvement to make a change. Suffrage on its own could not become a full wave of feminism whereas nationalism could.

Demands for women’s suffrage began at the end of the nineteenth century with the first attempt to organize activist women. This push was due to the larger discussions that were occurring around the rest of Europe at the time. Another key factor lay with the political dependence of Ireland on Britain. In 1800, the Acts of Union ordered Ireland’s parliament to be absorbed into Westminster’s. Any law passed at Westminster was automatically a law in Ireland as well as Britain. This meant that if Irish activist women wanted suffrage, they needed English citizens to work with, and advocate for, them. Between 1800 and 1880, the focus for both

English and Irish activist women was on familial rights and education rather than suffrage. As 49 women were expected to stay in the home and be dependent on a husband or father, rights to children, property, inheritance, and education were not automatically granted to them. Though these legal restrictions heavily impacted poor women, it did not become a major concern until many middle-class women started to grow resentful of their oppression. The first concern for activist women was to gain rights to their family, possessions (including property), and education. This was one way of breaking out of the private sphere. Until women had the right to their property, dowry, inheritance, children, and so forth, they were dependent on the men in their lives.105 Women had to gain these rights prior to demanding suffrage because, without some claim to being an individual person and an individual citizen, they were ranked no higher than children who must stay within the private sphere. It was not until the passage of the Married

Women’s Property Acts of 1870, 1874, and 1882 that married women gained the rights to own property independent from a man. Continuing with the pattern of familial rights, in 1873, women were granted custody rights to their children up to the age of thirteen. Previously it was until children reached the age of seven.106

Though the focus throughout much of the nineteenth century was on familial rights and education, there were calls for suffrage for women. The first work advocating women’s suffrage was published in 1825 by William Thompson and Anna Wheeler, called “An appeal of one-half of the human race, women, against the pretensions of the other half, men, to retain them in political and hence in civil and domestic slavery.” At the time of publication, no large scale action came as a result of this work. As suffrage gained traction, Thompson and Wheeler’s work

105 Rosemary Cullen Owens, Smashing Times: A History of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1889-1922 (Dublin: Attic Press, 1984), 7-12. 106 Owens, Smashing Times, 12. 50 would later be referenced to as a fundamental document to the cause.107 The call for suffrage by

Irish women does appear to be a manifestation of feminism but it falls short in a few areas. Irish suffragists were not seeking universal suffrage. Their goal was to give women the right to vote under the existing model, which allowed only women with property to vote. The general population also saw no real appeal because the suffragists did not reach out to women of all classes. Appealing to the lower classes was critical in a country where most of the population lived in poverty. The only groups that saw real growth were nationalist groups and workers unions. Suffragist groups had to latch onto the popularity of nationalism in order to gain popular support.108

Suffrage for women in Ireland was not an alien concept. The Irish people were more than familiar with it. One way suffragists made their case known was through the prison system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This came from the actions of English women fighting for the same cause. As women were being arrested, their treatment and the conditions they lived in became a topic of debate. The courts did not know if they should be considered first class misdemeanants or convicts in either the first or second division. This confusion came from the

Prison Act of 1877 which created the special class that was fit for those who might be considered political prisoners. Much of this debate was gendered as well as political. The suffragist women could be treated as misdemeanants who had special privileges or they could be mixed in with regular convicts who lived in deplorable conditions. But, if they were misdemeanants, that raises questions about whether or not the government considered suffragists political prisoners. If the government considered suffragists political prisoners then this gave the movement more

107 Owens, Smashing Times, 18. 108 Matthews, Renegades, 65-66, 82-83. 51 sympathy since no one wanted to see a woman as a political prisoner. It was not polite. The debate reached a new level in 1909 when the Women’s Social and Political Union in England began a . Authorities force fed prisoners on a regular basis, which garnered more sympathy for the suffragists. As a result, Winston Churchill, who was Home Secretary, gave de facto power to the Home Secretary position to grant first class misdemeanant conditions to prisoners who were not violent, dishonest, indecent, or cruel. For suffragist prisoners, this meant that they were given special treatment but were not in the same realm as political prisoners.109

Generally, Irish men were not eager to address women’s suffrage while immersed with the wartime mentality. The sentiment was most visible in the statement of John Dillon, the deputy leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. In 1912, he claimed that women’s suffrage will destroy Western civilization, the home, and the leadership of men as given to them by God.

Newspapers were one of the most vocal in the suffrage debate and provided a clear image of what men thought of it. The Cork Constitution recommended that the government put suffragists on an island among the animals so that they could have their own parliament. Images of

“militant” suffragists led to further ridicule by male dominated newspapers. Women were drawn as ugly shrews, depicted as violent, and naturally angry. Not all newspapers were opposed to the idea and were very vocal about their support for women’s suffrage. The Citizen decided to take the arguments against women having the vote and flip the script onto men. They published several cartoons in which they argued that men should not have the vote by depicting them as drunks, gamblers, and physically inferior. 110 Once Irish independence was gained, in 1921, the

109 William Murphy, “Suffragettes and the Transformation of Political Imprisonment in Ireland, 1912-1914,” in Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens, ed. Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), 114-115. 110 Cliona Murphy, “’Great Gas’ and ‘Irish Bull’: Humour and the Fight for Irish Women’s Suffrage,” in Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens, ed. Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward (2007: Irish Academic Press), 94-96. 52 promise of equality for women was not immediately fulfilled, or something all men were keen to make good on.

In July 1922, Constance Markievicz sought to reach out to various powers in an attempt to sway them on the issue by citing the large amount of work nationalist women performed during the war. In her letters she recalled that the men who signed the proclamation of the Irish

Republic during Easter week wanted equality for men and women in terms of voting rights upon having an independent Ireland. Markievicz wrote that it was unbelievable for the men who were involved in fighting for independence since the 1916 proclamation and outwardly endorsed women’s suffrage to now be hesitant to pass a suffrage amendment. She asserted that women, young and old, had purchased their right to a voice in the government and that the right to vote needed to be extended to those younger women. Markievicz went as far as to accuse Éamon de

Valera, the then President of the Republic, of bringing the “English attitude” to Ireland as he spoke freely of his support for suffrage when he required the help of women, but now declined to support it. The concerns of suffragists from the beginning of the war appeared as if they were coming true. Once independence was gained, the new Irish government did not follow through with their promise to bring equality to all sexes.111 This frustration was also felt by Nora

Connolly O'Brien, who was also active in the fight for independence and suffrage. In her writing about her father, James Connolly, she states that “Revolutionary women are today showing once more that 'damnable patience' and are content to be the drudges of the movement.” With

Connolly as a significantly influential man in Ireland throughout the War of Independence, Nora said that if Ireland was to rely on the doctrine of her father to save the country then they cannot

111 Constance Markievicz, “Prison Letters of Constance Markievicz,” in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995). 119-122. 53 turn a blind eye to his stance on women's rights.112 After immense pressure was put on the government from women like Markievicz and O’Brien, the republican movement publicly commended Cumann na mBan for their service to the war and extended the right to vote to all

Irish citizens over the age of twenty-one in the constitution.

Cumann na mBan's opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922 along with the republican's overwhelming pro-treaty stance caused the defeat of the republican side during the civil war. However, activist women's involvement in separatist organizations hurt them in later years. As will be explored in Chapter Four, future governments were reluctant to recognize

Cumann na mBan as a military organization. In 1924, the Military Service Pension Act that was introduced by the pro-treaty party Cumann na nGaedheal, completely excluded the organization.113 During a debate on the Pension Act in 1927 to extend the terms of “wound pensions”, the Minister of Finance, Ernest Blythe, completely denied that Cumann na mBan qualified as a military organization. His claim was that Cumann na mBan plagued the male volunteers during the war and that they trailed the men rather than provided any assistance.114 It was not until 1934 that women were included, after the intervention of Senator Michael Staines to include those who were on the republican side of the War for Independence.115

The involvement of women in the war was all but erased by the government for a time.

Between 1947 and 1959, the Bureau of Military History gathered one-thousand seven-hundred and seventy-three oral histories, documents, and photographed. Of these, only one-hundred and forty-six were from women. The existence of these women in the study is mostly due to the one

112 Nora Connolly O'Brien, “Women's Part in the Revolutionary Struggle.” in In Their Own Voice” Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 154-157. 113 Owens, “Pacifism,” 63-64. 114 Owens, “Pacifism,” 74. 115 Owens, “Pacifism,” 64. 54 unnamed female member of the committee who gathered ninety-seven of the stories.116 When the Bureau began their work collecting stories on the war, women were, at most, given a brief paragraph at the end of a “fighting story”.117 In the study, the role of nationalist women remained visible despite attempts to silence them. Of the stories collected, sixty percent of the women were former members of Cumann na mBan and half of them were officers. Another reason for the lack of female representation in the study was that many of the women involved were still dissatisfied with the fact that they were denied pensions after the war simply because they were women or were working with troops off the record, and they refused to be interviewed. Those who did speak, especially those who identified as part of the Irish Citizen Army, did express their dissatisfaction about the misrepresentation of republican women. A passionate statement on this issue came from . She stated, in 1934:

It is a curious thing that many men seem to be unable to believe that any woman can embrace an ideal-accept it intellectually, feel it as a profound emotion, and then calmly decide to make a vocation of working for its realization, they give themselves endless pains to prove that every serious thing a woman does is the result of being in love with some man or looking for excitement, or limelight, or indulging their vanity.118

Many authors on general Irish history have tended to downplay or ignore female involvement in the fight for independence. Instead, the focus for general Irish historians lies in political and military history.119 Ireland’s military draft solidified the state’s stance on gender by asserting that a woman’s citizenship was defined by her ability to be a mother and wife.120

Though much of the work done by republican women was covert, later texts have neglected to

116 Owens, “Pacifism,” 59. 117 Owens, “Pacifism,” 65. 118 Owens, “Pacifism,” 69. 119 Owens, “Pacifism,” 73. 120 Caitriona Beaumont, “Women, Citizenship and Catholicism in the Irish Free State, 1922-1948,” in Women’s History Review 6, no. 4 (1997), 563. 55 delve very deep into discussing women in the war if the text is on the war as a whole. Guerrilla warfare, for example, was something that could not have been accomplished in Ireland without the help of women. In Guerrilla Warfare in the Irish War of Independence by Joseph McKenna, the role of women is packed into a single chapter and were rarely mentioned elsewhere in the text. To acknowledge women as prominent members and contributors to Irish independence would have forced the Irish government to see that women were citizens of the new Republic and were deserving of full equality under the law. This was simply not something the state or society as a whole was ready to accept.

Feminist women who made the biggest claim to equal rights in Ireland were the most rejected by the Catholic Church of Ireland.121 The Church opposed feminism in any form because it was a challenge to the separate sphere system. The Irish state opposed it because they feared that equality would put men in the home and rob them of their jobs which, when boiled down, is the same reason the Church had but from a different angle.122 The Church was opposed to women’s suffrage. Most of the country identified as Catholic during the early twentieth century. Social pressure and religious powers had an enormous amount of influence when it came to perpetuating traditional Catholic values. When a Church leader combines the overwhelming number of Catholics in Ireland with the Church’s stance on feminism, it was perceived as a way to intimidate women into thinking that they were alone, or have very few allies, in the feminist movement in Ireland.

As nationalism increased throughout the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, so did Catholicism. With the state and Church pushing against complete emancipation

121 Beaumont, “Women, Citizenship, and Catholicism,” 564. 122 Beaumont, “Women, Citizenship, and Catholicism,” 568. 56 of women in society, feminism was not able to gain resounding support from Ireland in the same way that it had in the United States and Britain. But, as nationalist women actively took part in the war, running guns, engaging in guerilla warfare, and fighting for the right to vote while gaining male support along the way while being Catholic and Irish, a wave of feminism unique to the Irish did occur. 57

Chapter Four: The Backlash against Feminism in New Ireland

Once Ireland obtained its independence, feminist gains were under attack by the new

Irish state. Irish Historian Lindsey Earner-Byrne described the period between 1922 and 1968 as one of political retrenchment for women.123 Many women felt immense pressure from the new government to retreat back into domestic life. Not only did the long standing patriarchal structure provide comfort to men who had seen battle, but the separate spheres model was used by the new government as the framework for a new Irish identity. As a freshly independent state, the Irish government was desperate to create a new national identity. Geraldine Meaney, a prominent Irish gender historian noted that women are often used as the “bearers of national honor.”124 In Irish nationalist iconography, male heroes may have been present in order to boost morale surrounding war, but it was women who were featured the most when it came to forming

Ireland’s image.125 Despite the attempts of Cumann na nGaedheal, the political party that dominated the first government of the Free State, to vilify activist women through many pieces of legislation that sought to subtly push women back into the home, many Irish women found that they had a new sense of agency. Additionally, Cumann na mBan found themselves disconnected from the “new woman” of Irish society. Feminist attitudes fostered during the war for independence had taken root and could not be eradicated even if women were no longer useful to the nationalist movement.

123 Lindsey Earner-Byrne, “’Aphrodite rising from the Waves’? Women’s voluntary activism and the women’s movement in twentieth-century Ireland,” in Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century: What Difference did the Vote Make?, ed. Esther Breitenbach and Pat Thane (London: Continuum, 2010), 95. 124 Geraldine Meaney, “Sex and Nation: Women in Irish Culture and Politics,” in Irish Women’s Studies Reader ed. Ailbhe Smyth (Dublin: Attic Press, 1993), 233. 125 Louise Ryan, Gender, Identity, and the Irish Press, 1922-1937: Embodying the Nation (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002), 14. 58

On December 6th, 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed and Ireland finally obtained independence. Depending on who was asked, this treaty represented either peace and compromise or a complete abandonment of the Irish republican dream. In short, the Treaty resulted in the withdrawal of British troops from much of the country, but Ireland would remain a dominion within the British Empire. While dominion status ended in 1931, with the Statue of

Westminster, it was not what many republicans wanted.126 While a dominion, The Oath of

Allegiance to the Crown would remain a requirement for those elected to public office and

England would continue to rule the north of Ireland. In June of 1922, with the bombing of Four

Courts by the IRA, a civil war over the Treaty began. In the thirteen months that the war lasted, approximately 5,000 were killed, nearly double that of the War for Independence. The pro-

Treaty Free State government is believed to have been responsible for 4,000 of those.127 With weapons supplied by the British Government, the Free State easily defeated Anti-Treaty forces.128 The IRA’s reliance on guerilla warfare only improved the image of the Provisional

Government amongst civilians. An unnamed observer noted that once the (much stronger)

Provisional Government puts a stop to the IRA’s use of guerilla warfare, they will be hailed as heroes and the IRA will lose all standing they had in Irish society.129 Many Irish citizens were tired. Mass arrests and executions of republican leaders only weakened republican support, deepening the rift within the IRA.

Irish nationalist women found themselves more involved in the Civil War than the War for Independence. Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Chief of Staff of the IRA in 1958-59 and President of Sinn

126 Thomas Mohr, “The Statute of Westminster, 1931: An Irish Perspective,” Law and History Review 31, no. 4 (November, 2013), 774-775. 127 Bill Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1-3. 128 Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, 77. 129 Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, 79. 59

Féin, the Republican Party, from 1970-1983, noted that nationalist women took their place as natural leaders during the Civil War. They did not need appointing as the place of women at the helm was so natural.130 Though no women died during the fighting, a greater number of them were arrested. Anti-treaty women were most visible as supporters of IRA members who were imprisoned, constantly writing to newspapers and demonstrating outside of jails. Seventy-seven women were arrested during the War for Independence. During the Civil War, that number increased to over four-hundred women arrested and detained without trial under

Powers Resolution in September of 1922.131 One of the most notable was Mary MacSwiney, a future president of Sinn Féin. As a veteran of the Easter Rising, she and her family were deeply involved with republican politics. When her brother, Terence MacSwiney went on a hunger strike while imprisoned, Mary wrote an article for the Daily Sheet in 1923. She established three reasons for hunger strikes: refusing to recognize British authority to imprison an Irish citizen, to call attention to the treatment of prisoners who saw themselves as POWs, and as an ineffective way to garner sympathy. She saw her brother’s hunger strike as representing the first reason. By outlining these types of hunger strikes, she was able to further bring light to the argument that

IRA prisoners were POWs and had certain rights that were being denied. This, along with her outrage over the illegal holding of eight IRA women two weeks after they were promised an unconditional release, gradually improved some of the conditions for IRA prisoners, mainly through clean clothing and linens. While the prisoners were not given POW status, the improvement of conditions did ease some tension amongst republicans.132

130 Margaret Keiley-Listermann, Sinn Féin Women: Footnoted Foot Soldiers and Women of No Importance (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010), 63. 131 Owens, “Pacifism,” 63-64. 132 Keiley-Listermann, Sinn Féin Women, 67, 69. 60

Hunger strikes by prisoners were a key weapon in Irish politics. Though men participated more frequently, women were no strangers to the method. , another veteran of the Easter Rising, engaged in a hunger strike during her six month stay at in

Dublin between 1922 and 1923. She wrote that the hunger strike was the only weapon imprisoned republicans could use and that they were extremely justified in it. Buckley and twelve other women engaged in their strike until they received new beds. Then Buckley made further demands to receive and send mail, which extended the strike for several more days. As a prisoner, her writing gained sympathy from many Irish people, which influenced the Irish government to amend treatment of prisoners without fully giving in to republican demands. In her letters, Buckley described guards beating women and having rags for clothes that were routinely ripped by drunk soldiers.133 These accounts along with the imprisonment of Mary

MacSwiney, resulted in the establishment of the Women’s Prisoner’s Defense League, established by Maud Gonne MacBride in 1922. This anti-Free State organization’s sole purpose was to protest the arrest and imprisonment of any anti-Treatyites. By November of 1922, forty women in Mountjoy prison were given the status of “political prisoner,” which granted them more rights and flexibility while imprisoned.134

Though Irish feminists, like most republican men, were fairly split over the Treaty, the

1922 Free State Constitution granted women over the age of twenty-one the right to vote and equal citizenship, placing them on the same level as men thereby appeasing many women who were unsure of where to align themselves amidst civil war politics. This along with anti- discrimination laws reinforced the 1916 Proclamation that convinced so many women to align

133 Keiley-Listermann, Sinn Féin, 71-72 134 Ann Matthews, Dissidents, 47, 50. 61 themselves with republicans during the War for Independence.135 The 1922 Constitution left many women with a significant amount of hope. However, the Cumann na nGaedheal government, led by William Cosgrave, repeatedly introduced legislation throughout the 1920s and 30s that was devastating to the progress that had been made during the war. The treaty caused a divide amongst the republican triad (made up of the IRA, Cumann na mBan, and Sinn

Féin) that would last for the next sixty years. The break in unity amongst republicans, as a result, had devastating legal consequences for women.

Once the Civil War came to a close in May of 1923, the Sinn Féin Party was in a crisis of sorts. Éamon de Valera, leader of the party, made several attempts to re-group. After three attempts, he had formed a committee that worked to gain 44 seats in Parliament. By 1923, Sinn

Féin opened 680 new branches and had a regular income of £26,000 per year, all with de Valera in prison between 1923 and 1924 for violating the Public Safety Act.136 The committee had three female representatives, with Mary MacSwiney acting as president. For Sinn Féin, it was not uncommon for women to be active participants. Eight were elected to the Sinn Féin Standing

Committee alone.137 While Sinn Féin regrouped, Cumann na mBan found themselves in a fairly serious predicament. Despite Sinn Féin’s addition of women to committees and high ranking positions within the party, Cumann na mBan continuously reached out to de Valera for more representation. de Valera did allow Cumann na mBan representatives to attend Comhairle Dáil

Ceantair (a constituency council for the party across a county or counties) meetings as observers but he rejected their demand for proportional representation. de Valera believed that delegates

135 Caitriona Beaumont, “Women, Citizenship, and Catholicism in the Irish Free State, 1922-1948,” in Women’s History Review 6, no. 4 (1997), 563-565. 136 Just over £1.4 million today, according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator 137 Matthews, Dissidents, 126. 62 from Sinn Féin should be the only representatives at conventions.138 Though it is logical to restrict representation in decision-making to only Sinn Féin delegates in Sinn Féin meetings, the decision to, essentially, distance themselves from the Cumann na mBan no doubt contributed to the further fracturing of the republican Triad. Cumann na mBan did eventually bully their way into receiving representation at Sinn Féin meetings. The tension created was only exacerbated when Cumann na mBan demanded the right to veto any candidate they saw as unsuitable, as well as when they chose to hold their annual convention at the same time as the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis

(annual party conference). As a result, Cumann na mBan saw an abysmal turnout for their events, as well as a dramatic drop in membership.139

While Cumann na mBan fought with the recovering Sinn Féin , Cumann na nGaedheal actively used images of Cumann na mBan and the, still active, Irish Republican Army as justification for passing the Local Government Act in March of 1925. The Act required all state employees to sign an oath of allegiance to the Free State, as an attempt to remove republicans from government service. Members of Cumann na mBan, the IRA, and Sinn Féin had to choose between their republican ideals and their jobs. Unsurprisingly, this created more of a rift within the triad.

The IRA and Cumann na mBan saw this as an explicitly British move. Over 400 employees were fired due to the Act. The government fired 390 men and 18 women, including 5 members of Cumann na mBan, for failing to take the oath. In 1933, during their annual convention, Cumann na mBan made a drastic change in their platform to align with their shift in identity. Article 1 of their Constitution, up to this point, had read;

138 Matthews, Dissidents, 127-128. 139 Matthews, Dissidents, 129-131. 63

Cumann na mBan is an independent body of Irishwomen, pledged to maintain established on January 21, 1919, and to organize and train the women of Ireland to work unceasingly for its international recognition. All women of Irish birth or descent are eligible for membership, except that no woman who is a member of the enemy organization, or who does not recognize the Government of the Republic as the lawfully constituted Government can become a member. The new wording for Article 1, as voted on at the Convention read;

Cumann na mBan is an independent body of Irishwomen pledged to maintain the Irish Republic proclaimed in Easter Week 1916, and to organize and train the women of Ireland to put into effect the ideals and obligations contained in that Proclamation. All women of Irish birth or descent are eligible for membership, except those who are members of an enemy organization. Members must never render allegiance to any government but a Republican government for all Ireland.140

The most notable change is that Cumann na mBan no longer recognized the current Irish

Government. By replacing all references to the first constitution and the new Republic with the, earlier, 1916 Proclamation. By including “all Ireland” at the end illustrates their complete separation from anything to do with the current Irish Republic, regardless of who was the ruling party.

Once the Local Government Act became law, Cumann na mBan started losing members.

The organization stood firm in their policy that if any member signed the oath, they were no longer part of Cumann na mBan. By this point, Cumann na mBan had already labeled themselves as a military organization that worked in conjunction with the IRA.141 However, this decision essentially destroyed them. From a military standpoint, Cumann na mBan could have revived tactics used during the War for Independence by allowing members to sign the Oath of

Allegiance and, essentially, work as a double-agent. Women had been used for garnering

140 published in Irish Freedom, June 1933, in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 158-159. 141 Matthews, Dissidents, 132-134. 64 intelligence throughout the War for Independence so there would have been no reason why they could not have used them for the same purpose in this instance. State teachers were included under this Act, which caused another serious blow to Cumann na mBan, as teaching was still one of the few jobs that were readily available to women. At this time, women were marrying later and therefore financially responsible for themselves. This paired with the fact that a great number of women were teachers put them in a vulnerable position. When forced to choose between their livelihood and their republican ideals, most women chose to sign the Oath.142

Much of the Irish population still lived in poverty and simply could not afford to lose any form of income they could find. By 1934, Cumann na mBan branches across the country were either dead or dying. The organization practically signed their own death certificate with the lack of a long-term plan and their unwillingness to compromise on any front.143

A direct attack on women occurred through the 1924 and 1927 Juries Acts. Up until this point, legislation had affected women only by their association with republicanism. Cumann na nGaedheal had undermined the concept of equality in a unique, round-about way. The 1924

Juries Act, essentially, gave women permission to be exempt from jury service. By not extending this right to men, the government decided that women and men had different responsibilities. For women, being involved in public life and politics as an equal citizen was not one of them. In 1927, after a significant number of women had opted to not sit on juries, Ireland put in place the second Juries Act which required women to register for jury service, rather than have them automatically enrolled. This still greatly diminished the number of women jurors. As a result, women who were on trial were denied the right to be judged by a jury of their peers. 144

142 Matthews, Dissidents, 135. 143 Matthews, Dissidents, 143-144. 144 Beaumont, “Women, Citizenship, and Catholicism,” 569-570. 65

Within same year, the Civil Service Regulation (Amendment) Bill attempted to further disenfranchise women by prohibiting them from a career in Civil Service by barring them from the qualifying exams. Though the bill failed due to extensive criticism from both male and female Senators, its ability to move through Parliament as easily as it did illustrates how aggressive Cumann na nGaedheal was in trying to strip rights from women.145

This attitude concerning a woman’s place in Irish society continued with the 1932

Marriage Bar. Beginning the following year, all female teachers at state schools were required to retire if they were married. For women who left Cumann na mBan to retain their teaching positions in 1925, this must have been devastating. Teaching continued to be one of the best career options for women in terms of pay, safety, and status. In the eyes of Cumann na nGaedheal, women needed to choose between home and school. The Bar was explicitly coercive.

Despite a very vocal opposition from the Irish National Teachers’ Organization and the Bar was passed nine months later. Along with citing a woman’s inability to tend to both home and school responsibilities, the Department of Education attempted to wrap their decision in a feminist cloth by claiming that female teachers not only restrict the job opportunities for other women, but create social tension if their husband was in a similar or less-paying field. The Department of

Education believed the needs of patriarchal society trumped a woman’s desire to continue working after marriage.146

Three years after the implementation of the Marriage Bar, the Conditions of Employment

Bill was introduced to the Dáil and Senate. This bill aimed to give male workers preferential

145 Mary Clancy, “Aspects of Women’s Contributions to the Oireachtas Debate in the Irish Free State, 1922-1937,” in The Irish Women’s History Reader ed. Alan Hayes and Diane Urquhart (Routledge: London, 2001), 67-68. 146 Eoin O’Leary, “The Irish National Teachers’ Organization and the Marriage Bar for Women National Teachers, 1933-1958,” in Saothar 12 (1987), 47-50. 66 treatment over female workers. Restrictions proposed included not permitting women to engage in industrial work, prevention of women from working prior to eight in the morning, providing young men with a different minimum wage than their female counterparts, and making it unlawful for an employer to have more female workers than “others”.147 The discriminatory aspects of this bill were wrapped in the narrative of protecting women workers as well as protecting Irishmen’s right to work. Though initially welcomed by unions, there was a quick backlash from other organizations. Groups like the Women’s Graduate Association and the

National Council of Women argued that the bill would only add to the, already high, poverty rate. Many women also wrote to newspapers protesting the unions that accepted a bill that took a woman’s livelihood from her. Nevertheless, to party leaders, a woman’s job was to always come second to a man’s. William Norton, leader of the Labour party, argued that women were only hired because they were cheap labor and that women were “invading” the workplace, a man’s natural sphere.148 Despite intense debates within the government and in the public sphere, the bill ultimately passed. Though practice and law cannot be confirmed to align perfectly, the message from the government that a man’s right to work trumped a woman’s left many women with a sense of unease and may have contributed to the increasing number of single women emigrating from Ireland throughout the 1930s.149

Once de Valera, who previously appeared to sympathize with feminists, formed a committee to revisit the 1922 constitution, republican women immediately made their concerns clear.150 Legislation that slowly chipped away at women’s rights in Ireland, peaked in 1937 with

147 Conditions of Employment Act, 1936, c. 16. 148 McAuliffe, “The Irish Woman Worker,”37-39. 149 McAuliffe, “The Irish Woman Worker,” 44. 150 Maria Luddy, “A ‘Sinister and Retrogressive’ Proposal: Irish Women’s Opposition to the 1937 Draft Constitution,” in Transactions of the RHS 15 (2005), 177-178. 67 the new Irish Constitution. This legislation provoked fierce criticism from women activists.

During this process, Article 3 of the 1922 constitution, guaranteeing equal citizenship, was removed. Blunt changes in wording, particularly in article 45.4.2 with the addition of the phrase

“inadequate strength of women,” were also cause for concern. According to historian Maria

Luddy, this campaign against the draft constitution marks the last major battle spearheaded by those who fought for suffrage.151 Much of the opposition was seen in Prison Bars, the only remaining newspaper edited by a woman, Maud Gonne MacBride. Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington made a point, in one of her articles, of noting that no woman was present in de Valera’s cabinet and that there were only two women present in Parliament representing the party. She wrote that the Women’s Workers Union, the National Council of Women, and the Women’s Graduate

Association all protested the new constitution. Skeffington then accused de Valera of never truly being an advocate for women. She recalled that during the War for Independence he was the only commander in Easter Week to turn women away from the cause.152 In a 1937 letter to de

Valera, Bridget O'Mullane, she stated that the constitutional changes were hurtful, especially after women were called upon by the IRA so frequently during the fight for independence as well as taking higher risks than men in many cases.153 Women’s ability to perform the same duties as men, with very few cases of discovery or losses, was a remarkable task during wartime and to be told that their strength was “inadequate” in the constitution was considered a slap in the face to all those who put their desire for equality aside to fight for the independence of Ireland.

However, the committee determined that the exclusion of women from the draft represented public opinion in Ireland and was, therefore, difficult to guarantee women a more equal role in

151 Luddy, “A ‘Sinister and Retrogressive’ Proposal,” 175-177. 152 Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. “Prison Bars, 1937,” in In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 164-165. 153 Owens, “Pacifism,” 73. 68 society.154

The Catholic Church was central in much of the backlash surrounding feminism and

Republicanism as a whole. Policies enacted by the new government and the Church’s position throughout the Civil War reflected the influence the Church had on Irish identity, despite disagreements between the Church and republicans during the War for Independence. As tensions rose around the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Church made its position clear through a

Pastoral Letter from the Irish Catholic hierarchy in October of 1922. The letter excommunicated anti-Treaty forces for as long as they opposed the Provisional Government. Though this position or feeling was not held by the general population, it still ruffled the feathers of republicans and may have contributed to the further decline in membership among republican organizations.155

When Anti-Treaty forces took , the Church made another statement, but in a more palatable fashion. In April of 1923, the Church hierarchy begged the men involved to remember

Catholic teachings and feel shame for taking up arms against their own country.156 With the support of the Catholic Church throughout the civil war, it comes to no surprise that the Free

State continued to look to the Church for support and guidance in their formative years.

One of the earliest indications that the Catholic Church had a direct hand in Irish legislation appeared in 1925 when the Catholic hierarchy published a statement arguing that for

Ireland to allow divorce in any circumstance would be unbecoming of the government. This resulted in William Cosgrave, the Prime Minister of Ireland, placing a halt on any bill that would

154 Luddy, “A ‘Sinister and Retrogressive’ Proposal,” 177-178. 155 Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, 129. 156 Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, 153. 69 allow a divorce to occur.157 Women irreparably bore the brunt of this legislation, tying them to abusive and neglectful husbands.

The greatest display of the Church’s power in Ireland, and the largest blow to feminism, came with the 1937 Constitution. Specifically, Article 41.2 stated:

In particular, the State recognizes that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The State shall, therefore, endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.158

Catholic influence on this amendment is most clear in a statement made by Archbishop John

Charles McQuaid concerning the draft in which he says that it is a fact of nature that a woman’s

“natural sphere” is within the home.159 The statement was not received well by republicans and feminists. Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington argued that the constitution stole from women what the

1916 Proclamation had promised them. John Costello, a former Attorney General, echoed

Sheehy-Skeffington’s statements by arguing that the article would take away constitutional protection of a woman’s life outside of the home away.160 In July of 1937, Maud Gonne

MacBride wrote in her newspaper, Prison Bars, which due to the continued imprisonment of republican men by the provisional government, now was not the time to be thinking of a new constitution. She argued that the current constitution had been agreed upon by every county in the country. She further noted that that when Ireland does finally become free, meaning fully united, and if a new constitution was thought to be required, the addition of Article 41 would not

157 Beaumont, “Women, Citizenship, and Catholicism,” 565. 158 1937 Irish Constitution. artic. XLI, c.2. 159 Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, cited in Siobhan Mullally, “On Women in the Home,” (University College Cork, 2013), 1. 160 Siobhan Mullally, “On Women in the Home,” (University College Cork, 2013), 1. 70 even be perceived as an option.161 In order to combat its very vocal opposition, the State and

Church claimed that any resistance was anti-Catholic.162 By placing such a simple label on anyone who disagreed with the government, and succeeding, all but married Irish politics with the Church.

In nationalist discourse, generally, feminism is flexible. What feminism is, and what a woman should be, drastically changes respective to the person, country, and time. Historian

Louise Ryan noted that, in colonial discourse particularly, the “unruly female body represented the unruly land and its unruly people.”163 For republicans, the same woman is passive, abused, and violated. This falls in line with the Catholic discourse on women. Ryan noted that the

Church advertised women to be both weak and susceptible to foreign influences as well as the biggest threat to morality and purity.164 While many Irish citizens may have found the intricacies of the new government and the many factions to be overly complicated and not worth the energy, everyone had a vested interest in protecting the morality of Ireland against women’s new found sexuality, brought on by the “new woman” movement in the early twentieth century. This was also a way for the Free State and Church to distract the people from unemployment, inflation, and lack of housing.165 The battle between a new found sense of female agency and the Free

State’s desire to create a traditional, patriarchal Ireland was played out in the press.

Coming out from under British rule meant the Irish government felt the need to create its own identity. Going back to the War for Independence, for many this meant a certain level of

161 Maud Gonne MacBride. “Prison Bars,” in In Their Own Voice, edited by Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 166. 162 Mullally, “On Women in the Home,” 1. 163 Ryan, Gender, Identity, and the Irish Press, 1922-1937, 1. 164 Ryan, Gender, Identity, and the Irish Press, 1922-1937, 1-2. 165 Ryan, Gender, Identity, and the Irish Press, 1922-1937, 4. 71 isolationism. This was particularly difficult to achieve in the 1920s, especially for the younger generation. The growing international “flapper” culture embodied everything that the new Free

State government wanted to distance itself from. Flapper culture was sexual, foreign, and directly attacked the patriarchal system.166 To multiple groups across the aisle, modern fashion was actually oppressive. For a woman to align herself with the flapper culture was to undermine not only her independence, but her country’s: the only true freedom was in Irish traditions. The most interesting group to oppose modern fashion were older republican feminists. One such group that took issue with flappers was the Gaelic League. Historically known for their involvement in feminist politics, they were greatly concerned for the same reasons as the State. While the group worked to preserve Irish language, dance, and music, young women would attend events wearing modern fashions rather than what they considered to be traditional Irish garments, which included long, modest dresses made in Ireland.167 To the Gaelic League, it was not so much morality that concerned them, but the increasing difficulty in preserving traditional Irish culture.

Much of this attitude goes back to the founding of republican organizations who vowed to only buy clothing and products made in Ireland by the Irish people. Flapper fashion was inherently foreign and, therefore, a threat to traditional norms.

Irish women who came of age in the 1920s and 30s were a new kind of feminist. They grew up with access to education, they did not have to fight for the right to vote, and they were the children of revolutionary women like Sheehy-Skeffington and Gonne. With innovative technologies that made cultural transmissions across countries easier, these new feminists were increasingly international in their thinking. Their freedom was through fashion and their

166 Ryan, Gender, Identity, and the Irish Press, 43. 167 Ryan, Gender, Identity, and the Irish Press, 50-51. 72 sexuality, a new frontier for feminism. The fact that they were attacked by the Church and the government along with feeling pressure from women’s organizations like Cumann na mBan to help reignite the fire of the last generation’s idea of feminism did not deter these new women.

Further, attitudes among young men were shifting in these young women’s favor. Newspapers began publishing letters from readers on the topic. While this alone does not gauge popular sentiment, it does provide a look into how some Irish people viewed the topic. Through these, support for women’s freedom of choice concerning fashion is evident. One writer, named

Veronica wrote into the Irish Independent in July of 1928 that ‘virtue begins within,’ meaning that a person’s fashion does not determine the quality of their character. This attitude is supported by a letter published in the same month where Sue wrote of how several young men would not give up their seat on a train for an elderly woman when she, while smoking a cigarette and wearing a short dress, did. Another writer, Patrick, expressed a common sentiment amongst progressive men, argued that women were already restricted enough in society, and should be allowed the freedom of dress. He further noted that if women were not dictating men’s dress then men should not legislate women’s fashion.168

The transitional period of 1920s and 30s Ireland was one of continued turmoil and uncertainty. While republican women of the last generation declined in the political arena, as a patriarchal government took hold, the new Irishwoman was paying her dues in fighting for her freedoms in a new, globalist society. The backlash against feminism after wartime and resistance to modern fashion is one seen in the United States and Britain at the same time as Ireland.

However, how women behaved and dressed, as well as their physical place in society, was deeply tied to an Irish identity that was still forming in attempt to unite the new, divided Ireland.

168 Ryan, Gender, Identity, and the Irish Press, 52-54. 73

Once the reactionary politics settle, the new Irish feminists would go on to find their place in the next manifestation of feminism as marriage, custody, and reproductive rights entered the political arena.

74

Chapter Five: Looking Forward: Ireland on a Global Feminist Stage

After nearly fifteen years of war and political turmoil, the period between the 1930s and

1950s was noticeably calm. Restrictive legislation, especially against women became a norm, and it had appeared that the conservative, Catholic government had won Ireland over. Cumann na nGaedheal, still led by William Cosgrave, was successful in their mission to vilify the IRA and Republicanism. The IRA and Cumann na mBan had also harmed themselves with the lack of any long-term plans or a willingness to compromise on any issue. After a period of rest, however, feminism started to come out of hibernation. This feminism was much more radical than previous manifestations. This next generation of women acknowledged their sexuality and, in a rapidly globalizing world, refused to compromise. While Britain and the United States had similar struggles during this same period, and saw many of the same social changes, Ireland had an additional obstacle in the Catholic Church. With this, the Irish people and government’s experience with “second wave feminism” further demonstrates that the country’s fight over gender equality may have shared some similarities with Britain and the United States, but had some significant differences.

Cumann na nGaedheal controlled Ireland for ten years after the end of the Civil War.

They focused on cutting the debt, limiting social spending, and investing in agriculture.

However, they continued to marginalize anti-Treaty republicans. After a decade of conservative spending, often times hurting the most vulnerable populations in Ireland, and the anti-republican sentiment, the party grew unpopular. By 1932, the anti-Treaty party, led by de Valera, had reformed as Fianna Fáil, and came to power. With a more liberal approach to economic and social programs, as well as the abolishment of the Oath of Allegiance, it appeared as if women 75 would see some relief from the previous government’s restrictive legislation as they were backing away from previous platforms.169

Unfortunately, women saw continued oppression. Unlike the previous government,

Fianna Fáil focused on the legislation of sexual morality rather than on women in politics and the work force. The government may have changed hands, but the Catholic Church had solidified itself as part of the Irish government. Out of flapper culture came a new sense of sexual freedom for women, and the Church worked closely with the new Irish government to stamp it out. The first piece of legislation came under the Cumann na nGaedheal government in 1929 with the

Censorship of Publications Act. This act explicitly criminalized the publication, selling, offering, and exposure of contraception in any form.170 During the debate on the bill James Fitzgerald-

Kenney, the Minister for Justice, argued that,

In our views on [contraception] we are perfectly clear and perfectly definite. We will not allow...the free discussion of this question...We have made up our minds that it is wrong...That question shall not be advocated in any book or in any periodical which circulates in this country.171

The Catholic Church was deeply involved from the start. In the bill, a Censorship Board was established to review material that was considered questionable. The board was composed of one

Protestant, three Catholic laymen, and one Catholic priest as the chairman, all chosen by

Kenney.172 With four of its five members representing Catholicism, the board actively enforced the Church’s official doctrine against contraception in virtually all forms. The inspiration for the

169 Niamh Puirséil, “Fianna Fáil and the evolution of an ambiguous ideology,” Irish Political Studies 32, no. 1 (2017), 55-56. 170 Censorship Act, 1929, c. 16 171 Noel Whitty, “Law and the Regulation of Reproduction in Ireland: 1922-1992,” The University of Toronto Law Journal 43, no. 4 (Autumn 1993), 853. 172 G.W. Hogan, “Law and Religion: Church-State Relations in Ireland from Independence to the Present Day,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 35, no. 1 (1987), 51. 76 bill was a report commissioned by the Committee on Evil Literature in December of 1926 that was set up by the Free State’s Department of Justice. It claimed that birth control was widely practiced in Ireland in rural and urban areas and it denounced the sharp increase in sexual offences. It found that propaganda on birth control was widespread and that extensive steps needed to be taken to stamp it out.173 The 1935 Criminal Law Amendment put further restrictions on contraception. Section 17 stated that, “It shall not be lawful for any person to sell, or expose, offer, advertise, or keep for sale or to import or attempt to import into Saorstát Eireann for sale, any contraceptive.”174 The state regulation of sexual morality between the end of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s cannot be viewed as an effort by the Catholic Church to impose its will on an unwilling people, though. By 1926, 93.5 per cent of Ireland was Catholic, according to the national census, though the Report of the Committee on Evil Literature showed that there were still discrepancies between official doctrine and actual practice due to the sheer number of people using contraception while Catholic teachings strictly prohibited it.175 Once these two pieces of legislation were enacted, Ireland’s feminist movement fell silent as virtually no women participated in radical politics. Irish historian Tara Keenan-Thomson noted that this silence and general animosity towards feminism was due to many Irish women believing that they had achieved all the rights that they could, therefore feminism was no longer needed.176

Interest in feminism was revived in the 1960s as many women began to engage in street politics and form new feminist groups.177 The reemerging of feminist thought in the 1960s can be traced back to emigration and young Irish women realizing their status in their country as

173 Crystal Hug, The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999], 79. 174 Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1935, c. 17. 175 Alison Healy, “Catholic Ireland: 1932 versus 2012,” Irish Times, June 2, 2012. 176 Tara Keenan-Thomson, Irish Women and Street Politics, 1956-1973: ‘This Could Be Contagious’” (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010), 23. 177 Keenan-Thomson, Irish Women and Street Politics, 19. 77 inferior when compared to women in other Western countries. By the 1950s, Ireland was still mostly rural. Farming was still performed with horses, as only one in forty-five farms had a tractor. Very little had changed since the start of the twentieth-century. This paired with repressive politics pushed young Irish people to emigrate to the United States and Britain.

Traditional Irish life was perceived to be dull and backwards by many of these young people.

Throughout the 1950s, women made up approximately half of the emigrants. They were, generally, young and unmarried. Past emigration trends showed a significant male majority.

Seeing women make up half of those leaving Ireland in the 1950s would have been cause for concern for the government. By the end of the decade, the inferior legal status that plagued women and the resulting emigration had pushed Irish society to reexamine the issue, leading to a rift between governing classes and general population over the place of women in society.178

The most radical form of feminism in Ireland arrived in 1962 when the birth control pill was introduced into Ireland. The Criminal Law Amendment of 1935 was still actively enforced but many women began to question the law as well as proper role of the Catholic Church in shaping public policy. Initially, the only way the birth control pill could be used legally was if it was to regulate menstruation for married women. The restrictions in place and standing of the

Catholic Church forced Catholic women, the majority of the population at the time, to choose between the Church’s doctrine and their health.179 Ultimately, many women chose to ignore doctrine and use the pill for “medical reasons”. By 1967, sales increased by 50 per cent and the

Irish Times reported that about fifteen-thousand women were on the pill.180 With contraception

178 Keenan-Thomson, Irish Women and Street Politics, 31-33. 179 Patrick Hannon, “Legislation on Contraception and Abortion,” in Religion and Politics in Ireland: At the turn of the Millennium, ed. James P. Macey and Edna McDonagh [Dublin: The Columbia Press, 2003], 121. 180 Population of Ireland at this time was 2.9 million, according to the World Bank. 78 difficult to access in Ireland due to limited availability and high costs, this number is surprisingly high for Ireland. The Irish Times broke this number down to 75 per cent using for contraception and the remaining 25 per cent using it for other reasons. A pharmacist in Dublin even stated that between 1965 and 1968 that his orders for birth control pills tripled.181 With demand increasing, the Fertility Guidance Clinic was able to open in 1969 in Dublin. The clinic provided contraception for free and argued that there was nothing in the law that prohibited it. Irish women also found that they were able to import contraception from other countries in their luggage.182

By 1970, many women's movements in Britain and the United States took their cues from major feminist organizations, rather than religious institutions.183 What some scholars refer to as the “second wave” of feminism had taken hold around the modern Western world. No matter how hard various churches and governments tried to stop it, the feminist movement appeared to be virtually unavoidable. The anti-feminist backlash Ireland of the 1930s and 1940s, in which the government desperately sought to push women back into the home and discredit traditional republican ideals was over. The Irish feminists of the 1970s, in many ways, echoed the flappers that appeared after Ireland gained its independence. However, this new generation of feminists was more assertive than their predecessors as they observed the experiences other countries, like

Britain and the US, where feminist had made tangible gains. The explanation for this came from

Irish intellectuals like Liam de Paor and Kevin O'Connor in the 1980s. They noted that the youth was the main source for this “identity crisis” that was forming out of “cultural pluralism”. The new generation wanted out of the “old nationalist shibboleths – race, language, Catholicism –

181 Hug, The Politics of Sexual Morality, 86. 182 Hug, The Politics of Sexual Morality, 90. 183 Daniel Hollis, The History of Ireland [Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001], 194. 79 while staying true to Ireland.”184 This shift in attitude required a more flexible cultural-political attitude that heretofore was not forthcoming from the Catholic Church.

As the influence of the Catholic Church over the people of Ireland had declined, the

Minister for Justice, Patrick Cooney, introduced a bill in 1974 called the Control of Importation,

Sale, and Manufacture of Contraceptives Bill in order to restore Catholic morality to the country.

Though he may not have admitted this publicly in those exact words, Cooney was known to be a devout Catholic. The bill aimed to tighten to loopholes present in the Criminal Law Amendment by only permitting chemists to sell contraceptives and by only allowing married couples to purchase them. According to Cooney, single people had no right to contraception. Ultimately this bill failed to pass, which hinted at a shift in public opinion. In 1971, surveys showed that 63 per cent of Irish citizens were in favor of a ban but in 1974, the year the bill was formally proposed, there was a more drastic shift in opinion. The survey done by Dr. Keith Wilson-Davis showed that out of 754 married women in Ireland between the ages of 15 and 44, almost 60 per cent wished to see the ban on contraception lifted.185 Much of this change was likely due to the work of organizations like the Women's Liberation Movement in Dublin. Most of the women who founded this group were journalists, and therefore were easily able to disseminate their message that they would not stand for sexism within Ireland, legally and socially. They regularly circulated pamphlets and organized meetings and protests to address issues facing Irish women.186 Though the Church still had a hold on the government in Ireland, women's movements had control of the press and were able to have just as large of a microphone, and

184 Hollis, The History of Ireland, 196. 185 Hug, The Politics of Sexual Morality, 107. 186 Anne Stopper, Mondays at Gaj's: The Story of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement [Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2006], 1. 80 virtually just enough influence over the Irish people. With this outlet, the Women's Liberation

Movement was able to lead major demonstrations. Nell McCafferty, a founder of the Irish

Women's Liberation Movement, stated that,

Our very first demand was access to contraception...we decided that the legalization of contraceptives would immeasurably improve the situation of Irish women...if you had children outside of marriage you were incarcerated in mother and baby homes called Magdalene Homes run by the nuns and then there you'd have your baby and the baby would be immediately adopted.187

The most famous example by this organization was the Contraceptive Train of 1971 in which the goal was to board a train in Belfast, and ride it back to Dublin with as many contraceptives as possible, in as many forms as possible. The support these women received by other Irish women was overwhelming. When they were stopped by customs, women threw condoms over the shoulders of officers in attempt to get as many into the country as possible, even though they still risked the confiscation of the contraception held on their persons. With such large crowds at the train station, the guards were forced to let the women through with the contraceptives. The men working customs claimed that they could not arrest all 40 women aboard the train who were involved. The exact reason could range anywhere from the amount of paperwork required from their arrests to giving the movement sympathy and more support, which was the last thing the government wanted. McCafferty stated that this event led by the

IWLM was the start of the biggest revolution in Ireland, which was the separation of Church and

State.188

187 Nell McCafferty, “Witness: The Irish Contraceptive Train,”BBC World Service Podcast audio player, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gnl35. 188 McCafferty, “Witness: The Irish Contraceptive Train.” 81

The number of demonstrations increased throughout the 1970s. Women's liberation movements became bolder in their demonstrations when they held protests outside of Roman

Catholic Churches during Sunday mass.189 The old relationship between Church and State was increasingly under challenge throughout the decade. In 1974, the Irish Times' legal correspondent publicly stated that the current law concerning contraception damaged justice.190

John Lynch, the Prime Minister at the time, stated in 1971 that the Irish constitution required religion to be separate from government.191 Lynch supported contraception reform and expressed a desire for a more secular government in 1972 when he declared,

The Attitude of the government in relation to the existing law on...contraception is not determined by the official teaching of any religion. In considering any case made for a change...the state should not legislate in the field of private morality...192

This sentiment was felt in the Labour Party, the opposition to the ruling party, during their annual conference in 1971 when they passed a motion supporting the legalization of contraception.193 The Irish population was no different in their opinion on contraception and

[heterosexual] sex as a whole. In 1976, a survey of Catholics found that 44 percent felt there were exceptions to the general rule that sex before marriage was always wrong. When they were asked about contraception, 58 percent of Catholic students believed it to be morally acceptable.

A similar result was found in the four volume Survey of Religious Practice, Attitudes and Beliefs, out of the Research and Development Unit of the government, conducted between 1973 and 1974.

It found that of individuals between 18 and 30, 49 percent of men and 45 percent of women

189 Yvonne Galligan, “Contraception,” in Women and Politics in Contemporary Ireland: From the Margins to the Mainstream, edited by Yvonne Galligan (Herndon, Virginia: A Sassel Imprint, 1998), 146. 190 Diarmaid Ferriter, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland [London: Profile Books Ltd, 2009], 408. 191 Ferriter, Occasions of Sin, 110. 192 Ferriter, Occasions of Sin, 408. 193 Galligan, “Contraception,” 146. 82 believed that contraception was morally acceptable and responsible.194 In 1979, contraception was legalized for all citizens in Ireland by the Health (Family Planning Act) Bill.195

The rapid changes in reproductive legislation did not occur solely because of the shift in culture in Ireland. Throughout the 1970s, much of the post-civil war legislation enacted by the

Cumann na nGaedheal government was repealed. A great deal of this stemmed from the

European Union’s Commission on the Status of Women, founded in 1972, and Ireland’s admittance to the EU in 1973. Within a year after joining the EU, the Marriage Bar was lifted and in 1974. The idea of equal pay was raised by EU directives, and laws mandating it were passed in 1977.196

While these new laws were a direct result of joining the EU, the Irish government did independently make meaningful reforms. In 1976, the Juries Act was officially repealed and replaced, permitting all citizens over 18 on the electoral register to be eligible for jury duty. An individual no longer had to be male or own property.197 This same year, additional progress was made with passage of the Family Law Act. Prior to this legislation, a woman who was beaten by her husband could either stay in the home with him or face homelessness. She, generally could not return home as there was a large amount of social stigma against a woman leaving her husband. Legally, an abusive spouse could not be ordered to stay away from the family home, leaving many women few options. With the passage of the Family Law Act, a spouse could seek a restraining order when the safety or welfare of the spouse or child was at risk. The law greatly

194 Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922 to the Present [London: Cornell University Press, 1985], 232. 195 Health (Family Planning) Act. 1979, c. 4. 196 Mary Daly, “The ‘women element’ in Politics: Irish Women and the Vote, 1918-2008,” in Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century: What Difference Did the Vote Make?, ed. Esther Breithenbach and Pat Thane (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), 85. 197 Juries Act, 1976, c. 6. 83 improved the status of women and was expanded in 1981 to further protect domestic violence victims.198

Protections for women in the work force, at home, and in the public sphere improved tremendously during the 1970s. However, by the end of the decade, and end of what is traditionally viewed as “Second Wave Feminism,” much was left to be desired. Abortion still remains illegal and is cause for large scale protests from time to time. Marital rape did not exist as a legal construct until 1990 and the first successful prosecution for marital rape did not occur until 2002. While feminists the United States and Britain had success in establishing multiple legal protections for women during “second wave” feminism, Irish feminists were still pushing.

While this period can be identified as a second wave of feminism, it should not be lumped in with Britain and the United States’ “second wave”. Reproductive rights rocked Catholic Ireland to its core and significant, sustained progress was made. However, for Ireland to fully achieve reproductive rights and more, they may need to experience another wave, or multiple manifestations, due to how engrained the pro-life and patriarchal sentiment is in the Irish identity. For the Irish people and government, their “second wave” was less effective in gaining political and reproductive rights, but the effect it had on the overall culture constitutes calling it a

“wave.”

198 Family Law Act, 1976 sec. 22. 84

Conclusion

This thesis has examined the Irish government and people’s relationship with feminism in order to more accurately track and quantify the effects of their feminism. In the one-hundred years that this project has explored, there have been massive shifts in attitude concerning the place of women in Irish society. With each “manifestation” and “wave,” women broke further out of the private sphere and asserted their agency with two wars, a new state, and the Catholic

Church working against them. While Ireland is similar in many ways to Britain and the United

States, there are important differences that have not been adequately addressed within the literature, particularly concerning the history of feminism.

The larger goal of this thesis has been to illustrate how personal our experiences of feminism are. The current “waves” model has implied that the British and American paths to gender equality are the standard in which all other societies are compared to. As illustrated in the literature review, scholars have begun to question what a “wave” really is and how it can best be applied to other societies, but have yet to come to a consensus. By providing a firm definition of a “wave” and introducing the term “manifestation,” this thesis has contributed to the current debate among feminist scholars and historians. The history of feminism within Irish women’s history has begun to develop in recent years. With the addition of new terminology that adequately reflects the Irish experience, this thesis further aids in the growth of the history of

Irish feminism.

By looking at the larger history of Irish women, rather than focusing on a single event or decade, this thesis has found that many Irish women had additional obstacles in their fight for equality that their American and British counterparts have not needed to address. Education reform at the end of the nineteenth century was a monumental step in breaking Irish women out 85 of the private sphere that significantly changed how women were perceived in Irish society. By asserting themselves in the classroom, activist women were able to stake their claim to full citizenship as nationalism took hold at the beginning of the twentieth century. With access to higher education and the determination to fight alongside men for an independent Ireland, republican women demonstrated that they were worthy of being full citizens with the right to vote. The Irish suffrage movement struggled a great deal as the country entered the War for

Independence. By latching on to national sentiment and building the idea of suffrage into a forming national identity, suffrage for women was able to be achieved. When Ireland did become an independent state in 1921, the new Irish governments turned away from the women who were so crucial to the republican cause. The backlash against feminism grew out of the Irish government’s desire to revert back to Catholic tradition concerning social and familial structures.

Though the Irish government was stripping political and worker rights from women, a new generation of women were coming of age and taking control of their sexuality. After a twenty year hibernation, feminism took hold in Ireland once again in the 1960s with the introduction of the birth control pill. Reproductive rights shook the Irish societal structure to its core. While Irish women did not achieve full reproductive rights and did not result in as much political change as it did in Britain and America, Ireland still felt a wave of feminism. With increased globalization, feminism in Ireland has begun to look more like the feminism in Britain and America. However, due to the government and people’s strong relationship with the Catholic Church, their feminism will always be unique to them.

While this project has aimed to be as comprehensive as possible, there is still a substantial amount of work to be done. The future of this project will aim to include discussions on Ireland in both World Wars, the role of feminism during , and the evolving 86 relationship with the Catholic Church, as well as the evolution of the IRA and Cumann na mBan into the twenty-first century. While the Irish people and government continue to grapple with social issues such as abortion and LGBT+ rights, the history of feminism in Ireland will continue to evolve and requires analysis specific to its national context.

87

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