I had the privilege of meeting Eric Hobsbawm, the late eminent left-wing historian, a few years ago, and I took the opportunity to ask him what he felt was the most significant revolution of the twentieth century. Without hesitation he answered “Undoubtedly, the women's revolution.” Ireland played its part in that revolution, and it is something to be proud of. It's instructive to reflect that the two greatest human rights achievements in the west in the last two centuries, the achievement of suffrage for women and the achievement of civil rights for people of colour, were both achieved largely without violence on the part of their supporters.

It is important to remember that, at least until 1922, the struggles and campaigns for women’s rights in Ireland were inextricably bound up with the same struggles and campaigns in the UK. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and as such, subject to laws passed in the British parliament at Westminster, with some variations for specifically Irish circumstances. So let’s look at these parallel campaigns from the beginning of the 19th century and see how different strands – reformist, moderate, religious, militant, philosophical – all played their part in achieving votes and other important rights for women.

The mother of all women’s rights theorists was Mary Wollstonecraft, whose Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792, is widely seen as the first feminist text, although that term did not, of course, exist in the late 18th century. Wollstonecraft was the wife of the philosopher, William Godwin, and the mother of Mary Shelley, who went on to give us Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft was an eye-witness to the French Revolution, which inspired her first book, a riposte to Edmund Burke’s critique, Reflections on the Revolution in France. This book made her famous and gave her a mode of livelihood other than that of governess, all that was available to her otherwise. She went on to produce several more popular books, among them the Vindication.

She laid women’s inequality at the door of inadequate education, arguing that if women were given a rational education as mem were, they would not only be more virtuous, but also better wives and daughters, and most importantly, citizens, that category of being given new autonomy and strength by the French Revolution.

“I then would fain convince reasonable men of the importance of some of my remarks; and prevail on them to weigh dispassionately the whole tenor of my observations. – I appeal to their understandings; and, as a fellow-creature, claim, in the name of my sex, some interest in their hearts. I entreat them to assist to emancipate their companion, to make her a help meet for them! Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers – in a word, better citizens.”

Her emphasis on women’s education laid the seeds for one of the great feminist battles of the 19th century,

Wollstonecraft died in childbirth at only 38 years of age, and her husband’s posthumous memoir of her, which detailed a number of affairs, an illegitimate child and suicide attempts, made her persona non grata for almost a century. Men! Godwin meant well, but did not think of the consequences of his affectionate exposure of his wife’s unorthodox life. She was rediscovered in the late 19th century and now has a huge body of scholarship devoted to her.

Until the 1860s, there was a lot of activity relating to “the woman question”, much of it centered on evangelical religious, socialist and other philosophical systems which focused on human rights. The campaign for the abolition of slavery necessarily shed light on women’s lack of freedom, and issues like custody of children (solely the father’s until 1839) access to fair divorce laws (partly granted in 1857) and married women’s right to their own property were prominent. One of the most passionate advocates for these reforms was writer Caroline Norton, grand-daughter of the Irish playwright and politician, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who married a drunken boor and lost all of her income as well as her children when she left him in 1836. She retaliated by running up bills and referring the creditors to her husband, who in turn retaliated by accusing her of an affair with Lord Melbourne, the Whig Prime Minister, which resulted in a scandalous court case which the husband lost.

Norton was indefatigable in using her own situation to petition for custody of her children and the right to divorce her husband, and succeeded in both, as well as laying the foundations for the Married Woman’s Property Acts of 1870 – 82, which granted married women for the first time a separate legal existence to their husbands.

The next great champion of women’s rights was John Stuart Mill, utilitarian philosopher, MP and author of The Subjection of Women, published in 1869, hugely influenced by the ideas and writings of his late wife, Harriet Taylor.

”The legal subordination of one sex to another – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other."

This volume came after a petition which he presented to Parliament in 1866, signed by 1500 people, seeking extension of the elective franchise “to all Householders without the distinction of sex.” A year later, the petition led to the first debate on votes for women. On 20 May 1867 Mill tried to amend the Second Reform Bill to replace the word ‘man’ with ‘person’. He later described this as ‘perhaps the only really important public service I performed in the capacity as a Member of Parliament.’ The division was lost by 73 votes to 196, but Mill was delighted by the level of support, which came from both sides of the House.

Meanwhile, an Irishwomen, Anna Doyle Wheeler, born in Tipperary in 1780, married at 15 to a 19-year-old drunken husband, whom she left after 12 years with her daughters, was reading French enlightenment and socialist literature, including Saint-Simon and Fourier, and eventually translating them into English to make a living. She became friendly with philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and Robert Owen, and met the Irish philosopher William Thompson, who became her close friend and possibly her partner. In 1825, they wrote the wonderfully titled “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”.

They concluded: “All women and particularly women living with men in marriage…having been reduced by the want of political rights to a state of helplessness and slavery…are more in need of political rights than any other portion of human beings. Without (equal rights) they can never be regarded by men as really their equals”.

While suffrage remained the ultimate prize, a number of other issues were also part of the agenda for first -wave feminists.

In the 1870s in Ireland, women laboured under a variety of legal, economic and cultural constraints.

In the 1870s,  Women could not vote in local or parliamentary elections;

 Women could not be members of public boards or local authorities;

 Women were not expected or encouraged to earn their own living;

 Education for women was considered unnecessary and undesirable;  On marriage a woman’s property became that of her husband;  Women had legal custody of their children only to 7 years of age.

Educational and employment demands for single middle-class women led to further demands relating to property and child custody rights for married women.

The Intermediate Education Act of 1878, the Royal University Act of 1879, and the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 all contributed greatly to the improvement of women’s lives and economic prospects. In many ways, the expansion of education for women, particularly secondary education, was essential to the suffrage project. Education meant the possibility of economic independence, with its concomitant inevitable demand for civil rights. Of course, expanded education meant very little to working class women, most of whom had to work in any case to support their families, but who were to organise themselves early in the 20th century in the trade union movement, and in that capacity many of them supported the suffrage campaign. As the 19th century went on, demands grew for the opening of public boards and local authorities to women, the right to vote in local elections and ultimately for the parliamentary vote. Isabella Tod, a Presbyterian living in , who was tirelessly active in the campaign for women’s education, in 1871 organised the first suffrage society in the country, the North of Ireland Women's Suffrage Committee, and her speeches were widely reported in daily newspapers in both Ireland and England. She shared platforms with, and was a friend of, many of the leading English suffragists. In February 1872 Tod embarked on the first Irish campaign to secure the vote for women, addressing meetings at Belfast, Carrickfergus, Coleraine and Londonderry. On 21 February she addressed a meeting in which resulted in the establishment of a suffrage committee which evolved into the Dublin Women's Suffrage Society. She successfully campaigned for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869. Under the terms of this legislation, any woman suspected of being a prostitute could be arrested and forced to undergo medical examination by the police for venereal disease. She opposed these acts as an infringement of women's civil liberties. A life- long advocate of temperance, in 1874 she and Margaret Byers formed the Belfast Women's Temperance Association. Anna Haslam was born Anna Fisher in 1829 into a Quaker family in Youghal. Her family was active in relief work during the Famine, and also in the movement for the abolition of slavery. Anna became a teacher, and from her early years believed in women’s equality, right to education and the vote. She married Thomas Haslam in 1854. He was a convinced feminist, in favour of female suffrage and access to contraception, and wrote extensively on these subjects. They didn’t want children and had a celibate marriage. The two of them founded the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association in 1876, and proceeded to campaign steadily for expansion of the female franchise. Their methodology was steady, peaceful reformism – make friends in parliament, table bills, get up petitions, hold meetings with prominent speakers, fundraise. They were also active in the campaigns for women’s third level education, for married women’s right to their own property, and against the Contagious Diseases Acts, as was Isabella Tod. The British equivalent to Anna and Isabella was Millicent Fawcett, leader of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, by far the largest suffrage organization leading up to the vote being granted in 1918. She visited Ireland many times to speak, usually in the Molesworth Hall, the venue of choice for suffrage events. Millicent, like Isabella and Anna, was a unionist, opposed to Home Rule.

The franchise was obviously regarded as the key to political freedom for women, and in Ireland, a robust suffrage campaign kept pace with the British campaign, building support in Parliament, canvassing influential people, and raising consciousness among the population at large. Their efforts bore fruit in Ireland in 1896, when Irish women fulfilling certain property qualifications were allowed serve as Poor Law Guardians, and in 1898 when qualified women were allowed to vote in local elections and to be elected to Rural and Urban District Councils. By 1899, Ireland had 85 female Poor Law Guardians, 31 female Rural District Councillors, and 4 female Urban District Councillors. The focus now shifted decisively to the achievement of the parliamentary franchise. In Britain, the Women’s Social and Political Union was founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words". The WSPU was far more militant than the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and although it had a tiny membership compared with the law-abiding suffragists, its activities garnered a great deal of publicity for the suffrage cause. The term began to be used to distinguish militants from reformers. The WSPU engaged in attacks on property, including arson, window smashing and slashing works of art. The most tragic act carried out under its auspices was the horrible death of Emily Davison, who died being trampled by the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913. There is plenty of evidence that she did not intend to kill herself, including a return train ticket, and this makes it worse. She only intended to drape a suffrage flag on the horse, but fatally misjudged its speed. The Irish equivalent of the WSPU, the Irish Women’s Franchise League was established in 1908 by Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, among others, with more militant strategies than its predecessor bodies. The Irish Citizen, the newspaper of the IWFL, was founded in 1912, with the motto: ‘For Men and Women Equally, The Rights of Citizenship; For Men and Women Equally, The Duties of Citizenship’.

Suffragists had encountered hostility from many in the mainstream press. Concerns about how the suffrage cause was either misrepresented or ignored by national and regional newspapers led some suffrage campaigners to believe that they needed their own weekly paper. This newspaper enabled suffragists to promote their cause, to report on their meetings, advertise forthcoming events, express their views and generally ensure that the suffrage campaign was given a fair hearing. In addition to regular news items and editorial pieces, the Irish Citizen also published articles in which suffragists used a feminist lens to analyse some of the key problems facing Irish society. Many of these articles raised deeply controversial issues such as domestic violence, treatment of women in the courts and in prison, and the raft of abuses taking place behind closed doors in early 20th-century Irish society. The Irish Citizen is an invaluable record of suffragist writing and activism. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington came from Irish nationalist royalty: her father was David Sheehy, Irish Parliamentary Party MP, and her uncle, Fr. Eugene Sheehy, was an influential member of the IRB. She married Frank Skeffington in 1903. Margaret Ward, in her biography of Hanna, describes him thus: “Sporting a ginger beard (he never shaved, a protest at the tyranny of having to do so), he always wore tweed knickerbockers, long socks and boots. Once the suffrage movement began, he always wore a large badge in his lapel declaring "Votes for Women". Only five feet four and a half inches in height...he was a cartoonist's dream. He was against smoking and drinking, an anti-vivisectionist, a convinced pacifist". Their relationship was well ahead of its time in terms of equality (he formally took her name and added it to his own), and in many ways it mirrors that of the Haslams. Frank’s murder by a British officer in 1916 was the most devastating event of Hanna’s life. Other militant in the Franchise League included Margaret Cousins, who ended up in India with her husband James, where they established the All-India Women’s Conference in 1927 and worked for improvements in women’s education, Cissie Cahalan, an active trade unionist and one of the few women from a working-class background to have a major role in the Irish suffragette movement, and Meg Connery, seen here protesting against that implacable opponent of female suffrage, . The Irish Parliamentary Party and the Unionist Party both opposed female suffrage, and Sinn Fein was divided on the question, with Arthur Griffith sticking to the line that nationalism took precedence over feminism. So it could be said that votes for Irishwomen were granted in spite of, rather than because of support from the main Irish political parties, and we relied on perfidious Albion to grant us one of the great human rights achievements of the 20th century.

Suffragists used the 1911 census in April of that year as a means to protest their lack of the vote, by refusing to fill out the form. The Irish press had carried letters in the last week in March, for and against the campaign. It was, wrote one suffragist, ridiculous that though women could be taxed just as men were, when it came to voting they were classed as political nonentities alongside infants, criminals and lunatics. Refusing to fill out the census form was a protest that was, another argued, “constitutional and eminently ladylike.” On the Saturday night, 1st April, the committee of the Irish Women’s Franchise League were holding a meeting in the Antient Concert Rooms in Dublin, when a policeman entered and enquired if the women intended to hold a meeting again the following evening. He was told that there was no such intention, but that they had requisitioned a number of aeroplanes and submarines, the better to avoid filling out the census. It was illegal to refuse to fill out the census form; it could only be avoided if one was not in the country. In the Freeman’s Journal during the following week, it was reported that women had not, of course, taken to the seas or the skies to avoid filling out the census. The paper also remarked that the mooted all-night driving parties and picnics in the Dublin mountains had not taken place either. Women did refuse to fill out the census form, however. These appear to include Anna Haslam and Louie Bennett, long-time General Secretary of the Irish Women Workers’ Union. No returns can be found for either of them. The Freeman’s Journal offered some sympathy to enumerators in the wake of the boycott by suffragists, saying: “The enumerator whose duty it will be to address questions to the ladies who have taken up arms in the evasion movement is not exactly to be envied”. We can see from Hanna Sheehy Skeffington’s form that she tried to evade filling it in, but was put in by the enumerator. So there was a ferment of political activity going on around the issue of women’s right to vote, involving visits by the Pankhursts from Britain, the breaking of windows, and on the darker side, the forcible feeding of women arrested for militant suffrage activities who refused food. The WSPU had utilised the hunger strike as a tactic, leading to forced feeding and the eventual enactment of the Cat and Mouse Act in 1912, which allowed the authorities to release women suffering from the effects of hunger strike, and to re-arrest them when they had recovered. In Ireland, although a number of arrested suffrage activists went on hunger strike, only two were forcibly fed, and they were English visitors – Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans. They had thrown a hatchet into a carriage carrying the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, and , leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and tried to set fire to the Theatre Royal, where Asquith was to speak. Evans endured 58 days of force-feeding, a serious ordeal. Mary Leigh later described what it was like to be force-fed: "On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful - the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down - about a pint of milk... egg and milk is sometimes used." In the north, suffragettes were far more militant than their sisters in the south, engaging in arson, telegraph wire cutting, bombings (they bombed a stained glass window in Cathedral) and digging up golf courses, as well as the usual stones through windows. The WSPU sent Dorothy Evans to Belfast in 1913, and with home-grown suffragettes like Margaret McCoubrey and Lilian Metge she got arrested as much as possible and caused a great deal of trouble to the police and the prison authorities. The particular political circumstances in the North affected the suffrage struggle there, and the outbreak of World War 1 effectively put a stop to the campaign, with major players throwing their weight behind the war effort. This happened in the south too, as we shall see. Separatist nationalism, combined with enthusiasm for cultural de- Anglicisation, motivated Inighnidhe na hEireann, founded in 1900 by , and later Cuman na mBan, founded in 1914. was a leading member of both organisations, and also of the Irish Citizen Army. There was plenty of disagreement at the first meetings of Cumann na mBan regarding its alleged subordinate status to the male , particularly from Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, who saw them as purely a fundraising body whose existence would set back the cause of gender equality. The Irish Citizen referred to them as “animated collecting boxes.” The complicated connections between the different kinds of suffragism and feminism, between Unionism, Home Rule and separatist nationalism, and between supporters of World War 1 and pacifists made the Irish situation very interesting. As in Britain, the outbreak of the War created a defining moment: mainstream suffragism stopped campaigning and began, as Rosamund Jacob, the suffragist said, “knitting socks etc.” The IWFL tried to accommodate all shades of opinion, both in the organisation and in The Irish Citizen. It was a priority for them to keep the newspaper going. Frank Sheehy Skeffington, a convinced pacifist, printed a poster proclaiming “Votes for Women Now! Damn your War!” and got arrested for his trouble for anti- recuitment propaganda. Because the Third Home Rule bill, which in any case did not contain provision for female suffrage, was on hold until after the war, and the 1916 Rising concentrated minds on other things, everything calmed down in the suffrage world. The WSPU, amazingly, threw itself fully behind the war effort, and promised an end to militant suffrage activity until the war's end, and almost everyone else followed suit. Although the two main brands of suffragism, the Haslam and the Sheehy Skeffington approaches, were at odds in terms of tactics, Ireland being a small country, everyone knew each other, and bonds of friendship often transcended idealogical differences. There is a wonderful moment where Hanna Sheehy Skeffington describes Anna Haslam, the grande dame of “constitutional” suffragism, visiting her in Mountjoy when she’s been imprisoned for breaking Government windows: “Mrs. Haslam came, with a difference: “Don’t think I approve – but here’s a pot of verbena I brought you. I am not here in my official capacity, of course - the Irish Women Suffrage and Local Government Association strongly disapprove of violence as pulling back the cause. But here’s some loganberry jam – I made it myself.”…I appreciated and understood.” This exchange perfectly encapsulates the big debate between non-violent and militant approaches to suffragism, a debate which still divides analysts. Hanna’s obvious affection for a woman who devoted her life to achieving votes for women, in spite of their tactical differences, matches the affection Mrs. Haslam obviously felt for her.

So what was all the fuss about? Why were so many people, men and women, opposed to granting the parliamentary franchise to women? Rev. David Barry, writing in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in 1909, addressed the possibility of a woman ‘casting her vote for the candidate that is opposed …by her father and husband’. A woman was, Barry wrote, supposed to be ‘shielded by her male relatives from most of the hardships and disabilities of citizenship’. In the domestic sphere the final word was that of the husband. Why then, he wrote, should she ‘be accorded an autonomy in outside affairs that is denied her in the home?’ A wife who disrespects her husband’s authority threatens the unity of the ‘domestic kingdom’ and in that way children ‘are disedified’. ‘But how much worse,’ he continued, ‘would these evils be intensified if the bickering and contentions became public; if they appeared on opposing platforms and denounced each other’. A debate in the House of Lords on 10 January 1918, where anti-suffrage peers put down a motion to exclude the women's sections from the Representation of the People bill, gives a fairly concise list of the reasons for opposing female suffrage. This is the Lord Chancellor, Lord Finlay, opening the second day of the debate: “The first question which naturally occurs to one in approaching this subject is, do women want the vote? Some of them undoubtedly want it very much indeed. But do the majority of women want it? I confess that I am not at all satisfied that they do. “

So, he's contending that women do not want the vote, despite years of petitions, meetings, parliamentary bills, mass meetings, and latterly, agitation and public protest. He goes on to deal with this:

“Does the nation want this great change to be made? There is the same paucity of evidence upon that. ...In the absence of any utterance on the question in the ordinary and constitutional way, we are invited to have regard to meetings of various committees, conferences, conclaves, and to resolutions passed...There is such a thing as manufactured opinion.”

Fake news! Next, he looks into his own heart to ascertain public opinion, as DeValera was wont to do:

“So far as the feeling of the country is concerned, judging for oneself, I should say that if there is any strong feeling about it in the minds of the population, it is rather one of being tired of the whole subject.”

Everyone is fed up with this topic. Best leave it alone. Next, the big question of women's war work, emphasised by pro-suffrage politicians and organisations as a reason to grant the franchise:

“What change of circumstances is there that can be relied upon as showing that opinion has changed on the point? It is said, "Oh, the war has changed everything. Look at women's war work." My Lords, I admit—no one admits it more ungrudgingly than I do—the splendid work which women have done in this war. The women of England have always done their duty in war time. They always will. They have done it in the past, and they will do it in the future, and I cannot see how anyone can say that his eyes have at last been opened to the fact that his fellow country-women are patriotic, and will do all they can in times of difficulty. Of course, they will do so. They will do so to the end of time, in any circumstances and under any Constitution.” We can hear the strains of Land of Hope and Glory in the background as our noble and learned lord makes himself delightfully sentimental on the subject of the patriotic females of England. Next, he seems to argue for further expansion of the franchise, rather than its refusal:

“Then there is this consideration, and it is really a little whimsical. All the hardest part of the work that has been done for the war has been done by women under thirty. The immense majority of munition workers are women who would not be enfranchised by this Bill.”

So give them the vote, Lord Finlay!

Now we get to the nub of the issue: numbers, and the unfitness of women to vote:

“The proposal is one for a gigantic experiment. It is to put upon the Register six millions of persons who are absolutely new to politics, and whose avocations and manner of life have hitherto precluded them from taking that active share in the discussion of political questions which all men, whatever their avocations, have more or less done. There has been nothing like it before in the history of this country.... There has been nothing like it in the history of the world. Is it not a leap in the dark?”

Not so much! Women at this point had the vote in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and several of the United States, including Wyoming, Idaho and Utah. So not a leap in the dark at all, nor nothing like this in the history of the world. But the unfitness question is more insidious. See how he now combines his sentimental view of women with contempt for their mental capacities and terror of their numbers:

“Now, my Lords, what would be the effect of the admission of these six million voters to the Register if that contingency happened? Would not there be a vast amount of material for agitation, by those who are called pacifists, who are in favour of a hurried peace, among the millions of women who without political experience it is proposed to enfranchise by this Bill? What effect upon these inexperienced voters might not war weariness produce. —loss of sons, husbands, brothers, and it might be scarcity and privation—I do not speak of privation for themselves, because women are indifferent to privations, but for the children whom they love more than they do their own souls? If the result of the woman's vote should be a hasty and inconclusive peace, there will be an end of the greatness of this country, and in the near future, I believe, to the continued existence of the British Empire.”

Oh Lord, the end of the British Empire! That was being accomplished without any help from women voters. Now, the great nonsense of separate spheres, an idea that dominated the 19th century:

“There has been a good deal said in the course of this discussion as to the comparative merits of men and women. The whole of that discussion, I confess, seems to me very idle. Man has his sphere and woman has hers. I believe that women are in many ways higher and better than men, but I also believe that war and the government of this Empire are the business of men.”

We're better but stupider is what this means. And now a closing appeal to the memory of the Virgin Queen:

“We have had in this country a very great Queen, Queen Elizabeth, and have your Lordships observed that when that great Queen is praised she is praised for what the historian terms her "masculine qualities," and it is pointed out that her feminine weaknesses did not detract from the ability and vigour of her reign? My Lords, women cannot become men. They are something better, and in their own sphere they are supreme. My own belief is that women as voters for the Imperial Parliament are as much out of their sphere as they would be sitting as members of either Chamber of the Legislature.”

So in summary, women don't want the vote, but even if they do, the nation doesn't want it, but even if it does, everyone is fed up with the issue. Women did great work in the war but that is no reason to give them the vote and they don't want it as a reward. The bill is illogical because it excludes women under 30, who did most of the war work (and who also, presumably, don't want the vote as a reward for poisoning themselves with toxic chemicals in munitions factories). Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the world! There will be 6 million more voters on the register if the bill is passed. They are not equipped to resist the blandishments of sinister pacifists who will advise a speedy end to a war that was supposed to be over by Christmas 1914. They will dwell too much on the losses of husbands, fathers, brothers and sons and not on a resounding defeat for Prussian militarism. Such carry-on will bring about the end of the British Empire. Men and women inhabit separate spheres, and this is as it should be. Women are higher moral beings than men but too stupid to understand the Army and the Navy and the education and prison systems. Queen Elizabeth the First was great because she had, as she said herself, “the heart and stomach of a king”. But women cannot be men. Duh! And so we move inexorably towards the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which will give a limited cohort of women the right to vote in parliamentary elections for the first time. The first world war in many respects is the central context to the passing of the Act. There was concern within government circles in the final years of the war that without electoral reform many soldiers and sailors would return to a country they had defended but in which they did not have a vote. The corollary of this thinking was that a bill to enfranchise all men on the basis of active service must also include women who had served their country during the war; as we can see from Lord Finlay’s contribution, this belief was not shared by all.

The Act granted universal male suffrage over the age of twenty-one and enfranchised women over the age of thirty subject to a property qualification. Men who had seen active service could vote from the age of nineteen. For the first time the property qualification was removed in the context of the right to exercise the male parliamentary vote.

Women could vote if they were university graduates, if they were householders, meaning that they were on the local government register, were the wives of householders, occupiers of land or premises (not being a dwelling-house) of a yearly value of not less than five pounds.

The consequences of this are as follows: some women were still defined in terms of their husbands; not all women over the age of thirty were enfranchised; many young women who would have worked in the Land Army, on the buses, in the munitions factories were not enfranchised; many young women who were active in the suffrage cause still found themselves classed as unfit to exercise the parliamentary franchise. In Ireland, Rosamond Jacob, although thirty, did not have the necessary property qualification to vote. , a suffragist and a university graduate, could not vote because she was under the age of thirty.

To facilitate women standing for election, the very short, 27-word, Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 granted that right on 21 November of that year. Notably, women over the age of 21 were entitled to stand for election although they could not vote until they were 30. So a 31-year-old woman could vote for a 21-year-old woman who could not herself vote for anyone! The Act was passed in November 1918, just about in time to allow women to stand for election.

Seventeen women stood for election in 1918, two in Ireland, for St Patrick’s Ward in Dublin and Winifred Carney for the Victoria Ward in Belfast. Sinn Fein was not really interested in proposing female candidates – Winifred Carney’s campaign was for an unwinnable seat - and the Cumann na Teachtaire, the League of Women Delegates established in 1917 encountered much opposition. Kathleen Clarke claimed that male collusion and manoeuvrings prevented her selection, while Hanna Sheehy Skeffington declined to fight another unwinnable seat. The Irish Women’s Franchise League conducted a campaign to ask parties to nominate female candidates, to no avail.

Markievicz was the only woman elected to the House of Commons in 1918, She had huge visibility as a 1916 survivor, and was very well-known for her work with the poor in Dublin, particularly during the 1913 Lockout. She did not take her seat in Westminster, and instead became Minister for Labour in the First Dail.

The full parliamentary franchise was granted to women in 1922 under the provisions of the independent state’s new constitution. Women in Britain had to wait til 1928. Women in France would have to wait til 1945. When Simone de Beauvoir was writing The Second Sex, she couldn’t vote.

So did the women’s vote go on to change Irish society in the direction hoped for by its campaigners? The answer has to be no. Women, like men, voted along party lines, and many of them were deeply conservative Catholics who did not wish to see women advancing any further than they already had. The 1920s and ‘30s saw the gradual roll- back of women’s rights, to sit on juries, to divorce, to certain kinds of employment, to employment after marriage, to legal contraception. Article 41.2 of the 1937 Constitution squarely placed women in the home. Most of these measures were supported by women as well as men.

Ireland also maintained an archipelago of coercive institutions for women like Magdalen Asylums and Mother and Baby Homes, which have caused a number of commissions of inquiry to take place.

The feminist movement kept going, through organisations like the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers and the Irish Housewives’ Association, and women like Andree Sheehy Skeffington and Hilda Tweedy. but the environment for activist women remained inhospitable until the 1960s, when Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, am0ng other books, began what became the second wave of feminism. But that is a story for another day, as is that of our current third wave. I finish with a slide of Margaret Atwood’s hugely influential dystopian novel, now an acclaimed TV series, The Handmaid’s Tale, to remind us that what we have won can very easily be taken away.