IN THE end the struggle for women’s suffrage was always about far more than the vote. And its achievement – at least partially in 1918 for women over 30 with a property qualification – was ultimately just a landmark, a crucial landmark, on a still-to-be-travelled long road.
But the symbolism of granting the vote was powerful, an implicit acceptance that women were entitled to be given an equal say in the direction of public affairs was also an unanswerable declaration that in the realm of interpersonal relations between men and women, in the home, in the factory, in schools and universities, an irreversible shift in the unequal balance of power must also come. And will yet.
It was not a gift, but had to be taken, had to fought for with means that were often not polite, genteel, or by any means strictly constitutional. The women’s suffrage struggle shared that hallmark of all the great social upheavals, nationalist, unionist, and labour, of the 1912-22 period which shaped our modern history, or unwritten “herstory”, and which we are marking in this decade of commemorations. It is a somewhat uncomfortable truth that we must learn to acknowledge even as we find comfort in the later restoration of the thread of constitutionalism that is the country’s predominant instinct.
It is also salutary to recall that although the feminist movement of that time was created and supported by nationalist activists, Home Rulers and republicans, unionists, liberals, socialists and trade unionists, Protestants of all hues, and Catholics, and men and women of all classes, it was also opposed by all the above, many of them movement leaders. For many it was outright opposition to suffrage. John Redmond, to the disappointment of many supporters, refused to make suffrage an issue for the 1912 Home Rule Bill because of his own opposition and a fear that the chauvinist Asquith would pull the plug on the Bill. Sir Edward Carson reneged on his promise to ensure women’s suffrage in a provisional Ulster Unionist government. Many trade unionists baulked at what equal pay would mean to their jobs.
Yet in the face of a deeply conservative society a small number of extraordinary women fought a remarkable fight 100 years ago. In our “Century” supplement today, “How Irish Women Won the Vote”, we pay tribute to some of them: Isabella Tod, Anna Haslam, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Margaret Cousins, Helena Molony, Louie Bennett, Delia Larkin, Constance Markievicz, Kathleen Lynn, Cissie Cahalan, Jennie Wyse Power . . . Sisters who served Ireland well.