Women in Struggle - Álanna Campbell

Álanna Campbell

Coney Kilpatrick Cumann

Óige Phoblachtach East Tyrone

Today is International Women’s Day, and an important day typically where we, as republicans, reflect on women’s role in our struggle, and celebrate the many strong females we have today, who are a major part of our movement and advance it every step of the way.

However, I do not feel that a token day is enough to remember the dedication and life commitment that these women gave, rather we should remember with pride the women who contributed to the cause of Irish freedom and unity every day and strive to keep their memory alive and to continue what they dedicated their lives to; a 32 county socialist republic.

Women have played numerous, important roles throughout Irish history and politics, each as important as the next, and women continue to be a driving force behind our movement. We have had strong female leaders who committed themselves to the re-unification of Ireland such as Countess Markievicz and Mairéad Farrell, women in Armagh Gaol who participated in no wash protests and the 1980 Hunger Strike, along with the male prisoners of war in Long Kesh at the time, and the famous images of women banging the ground with bin lids depicts how the women in the Falls area of Belfast courageously warned their neighbours that the Brits were coming whilst the area was on curfew in July 1970.

Women passed messages in and out of the jail between the republican prisoners and the outside world, they provided safe houses for those on the run and continued to maintain a sense of normality and carry on with everyday life within their families, often becoming single parents and juggling the many different roles such as wife, mother, daughter, sister, soldier, freedom fighter, prisoner of war and so on.

Indeed women have always been instrumental in the fight for Irish Freedom and continue to fight for that justice today. In the many different twists and turns our struggle has taken, women have been to the forefront of this; whether it was joining Cumman na mBan and bravely giving up their lives for their country up until the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998, or now fighting our struggle in the assembly in Stormont and being active in their communities promoting the necessity for a united, socialist Ireland.

Women are still not equally represented in politics and are very much a minority in the typically and traditionally patriarchal, male dominated sphere and although the role and importance of women’s contribution to our history has been overlooked in the past, I believe in this progressive age, and in the progressive nature of Sinn Féin as a party and the dedication and the enlightened and revolutionary views of our youth movement, Sinn Féin Óige Phoblachtach, that the future of women in politics and in our movement is bright. Women will continue to play an active role in politics, in the shaping of our country and their actions and contributions will be recognised, and celebrated eternally, and not just on one day a year.

In the words of Mairead Farrell:

"I'm oppressed as a woman, but I am also oppressed because I'm Irish. Everyone in this country is oppressed and we can't successfully end our oppression as women until we first end the oppression of our country. But I don't think that's the end of it. It happened before where women took the back seat. But women today have gone through too much, no way will they allow that to happen.”