Gender: Gendering the Irish Revolution

Abstract

In June 1932, a few months after the election of the first Fianna Fáil Government and also a few days after Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, had landed her plane in County Derry, Nora, daughter of James Connolly, wrote a bitter reflection on the current poor position of revolutionary women in Ireland. In Nora’s eyes, the past had been very different. In the period before the 1916 Rising she remembered her father’s encouragement of women:

The more active part women took in a movement the greater his pleasure; by his advice and counsel he encouraged them; more, he gave them often that little extra push forward they needed. He saw nothing incongruous in a woman having a seat on an army council, or preferring to bear arms to winding bandages.¹