Led the way before and shall do it again!

Gemma McKenna
Ógra Shinn Féin

Invisible Women

The singer sings a rebel song
And everybody sings along.
Just one thing I’ll never understand:
Every damn rebel seems to be a man

For he sings of the Bold Fenian Men
And the Boys of the Old Brigrade.
What about the women who stood there too
“When history was made”..?

Ireland, Mother Ireland,
With your freedom loving sons,
Did your daughters run at the sounds of guns?
Or did they have some part in the fight
And why does everybody
Keep them out of sight?

For they sing of the Men o the West
And the boys of Wexford too.
Were there no women round those parts;
Tell me, what did they do..?


The poem by Brian Moore sums up the place women have been resigned to in Irish history. But as the poem suggests it is completely unjustified, with women rather than running away at the sound of shot guns, rose up and stood beside their male counterparts in order to defeat the British together.

Women have been active from the very beginning of this struggle and have played a crucial role within Sinn Fein.

If we look at politics today it is still male dominated and currently all the leaders of large parties are men. However along with its revolutionary politics Sinn Fein also promoted women as equal to men. This is clear in the fact that Margaret Buckley was President of the party from 1937 to 1950, making it a first for Irish politics, with her the first woman to be the leader of any major party in Ireland and something that has yet to be repeated.

Margaret Buckley dedicated her whole life to achieving freedom for her country, she joined Cork branch of Inghinidhe n'Eireann in 1901 at the young age of 16 and went on to be a founding member of the Cork Branch of Fianna Eireann.

She was a member of Cumann na mBan before the Easter rising and was then imprisoned for a year in mountjoy after it. When she was later imprisoned in 1923 she participated alongside other prisoners in a mass hunger strike.

This woman is an inspiration to us all!

She is a reminder that her and many other women did not shut themselves at home but rose up against British oppression and fought for freedom alongside their male comrades. She sacrificed and suffered in order to free her country, she did not leave it up to others or indeed to men to win the fight for her.

Margaret Buckley was not only a follower but a great leader which is shown clearly in the fact that she was President of Sinn Fein for 13 years.

She didn’t wait for others to make a difference, instead she took control. If we think politics is unfriendly to women now, what difficulties to you think this woman encountered over 60 years ago?

Yet she didn’t back down instead her abilities and skills won her the respect of the party.

I urge all female activists to take a note from Margaret Buckley, if she took the led over 60 years ago then why can we not do it now? This woman and others like her have travelled the difficult path in order to path the way for us.

Now it is up to you what road you take, you can choose to make excuses and leave it to others to continue the struggle or you can fulfil your potential and continue the fight for freedom, the fight for equality.

Read over this poem and make your own decision:

For strong women

A strong woman is a woman who loves

strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly

terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong

in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;

she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf

suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she

enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving

her equally for the strength and for the weakness

from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.

Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.

Only water of connection remains,

flowing through us. Strong is what we make

each other. Until we are all strong together,

a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

Marge Piercy