Ulster, Women during the Troubles in (National Liberation)

The experience of women in Ulster, or Northern Ireland, during the three decades of "the Troubles" from 1968 to 1998. Women took on direct roles in the conflict as protesters, peace activists, militants, prisoners, and politicians. They also played indirect but equally important roles: as housewives who kept families together amid tragedy and upheaval; as churchwomen who strengthened their communities and supported the bereaved; and as quiet, sometimes secretive supporters of men on both sides involved in the fighting.

The Troubles began in 1968 with the first civil rights marches protesting discrimination against Catholics in housing, political representation, employment, and public services by the Protestant government. Following the Irish independence movement and the resulting partition of the Irish Republic in 1922, the six northern counties of Ulster remained part of the United Kingdom. Society in Ulster was segregated along sectarian lines: the indigenous Irish were traditionally Catholic, Republican, and Nationalist in religion and politics, many desiring either home rule or merger with the Irish Republic; those descended from the British colonialists who had settled in Ireland, however, were traditionally Protestant, Unionist, and Loyalist in their wish to remain a part of the United Kingdom and maintain a majority Protestant government. Women in large part fulfilled their traditional roles in families and churches, but these responsibilities did not prevent a large number of women from rising as leaders, organizers, and active participants in the conflict.

A militant Catholic leader whose career spanned the breadth of the Troubles was Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, who emerged as a leader in the student movement of the late 1960s. She was elected as a member of parliament at the age of twenty-one and became known for her electrifying speeches and her activism in marches and protests. She was jailed twice for inciting violence and gained notoriety when she struck Home Secretary Reginald Maudling in Parliament after he claimed that the Bloody Sunday incident of 1972, in which British paratroopers shot dead thirteen unarmed Catholic protesters, was provoked by the protesters. McAliskey and her husband survived serious gunshot wounds in an attempted assassination in 1981, but she persisted in her outspoken public persona, encouraging direct action and violent struggle against the injustices of the majority Protestant government of Ulster.

In contrast, other women organized a peaceful response to the violence and tragedy of the Troubles. Monica Patterson, a Catholic, and Ruth Agnew, a Protestant, formed Women Together in 1970, drawing women from both communities to break up mobs, hold vigils and rallies, and support the families of those killed in the conflict. Another prominent peace movement was organized by Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams in 1976 after a widely publicized incident in which Corrigan’s three young nephews were hit and killed by a car after a British soldier shot its driver. The Peace People Movement was the result, and the organization initiated peace marches and rallies across the country and abroad. Corrigan and Williams were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 1976 for their work with Peace People.

The conflict of the Troubles was a feature of daily life in cities such as Belfast and Derry, where Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries were particularly active and the mostly Protestant police and military responded with force to Catholic agitation. Housewives assisted paramilitaries such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) by providing safe houses, passing messages, and even alerting the neighborhood of police or military raids by banging metal trash can lids, a practice known as bin bashing. Other women participated as fighters within these paramilitaries, taking part in bombings, assassination plots, and street violence. Republican women were imprisoned at Armagh, where they participated in prison protests and rioting concurrently with their male counterparts imprisoned elsewhere. The activities of these women were often viewed in the context of women’s traditional roles: a sympathetic view saw active women as exemplars of sacrifice, whereas the opposing view saw such activity as an example of the depths of depravity to which a group would go, using "even women" for violent ends.

As the Troubles raged on, the Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Movement worked to challenge traditional gender stereotypes and to address problems unique to women, such as domestic violence, sex discrimination, and birth control. Founded in 1975, the movement operated as an umbrella organization for groups on both sides of the sectarian divide, bringing women together in common cause to improve their lives. Growing out of the movement was the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, which sent two delegates, Monica McWilliams and Pearl Sagar, to the multiparty talks that resulted in the Belfast Agreement, or Good Friday Accord, in 1998, effectively bringing the Troubles to a close.