Contributor:

Professor Diane Urquhart

Talk Title:

Gender and Partition

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the gender dimension to Partition, including its background and effects. It looks at the role played by the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council as ‘the largest body of political women in Ireland’s history’ and the ways in which women’s lives were affected by the politics, policies and attitudes of the states that emerged from the post-Partition period. It draws on contemporary accounts of events in the early 1920s, including about the impact of violence on community relations and against women. And it suggests that hearing ‘a different cast of voices, many of them female, allows partition to emerge as a history that is replete with raw emotion’, revealing ‘a gender history that often unites more than it divides those who were placed on both sides of the Irish border.’

Short Biography:

Diane Urquhart is Professor of Gender History at Queen's University Belfast and President of the Women's History Association of Ireland (WHAI).

Further Reading:

Women and the Irish Revolution – Linda Connolly (ed.)