EP 29: Women never voted for the Irish ”Republic” (& it’s Michael Collins’ fault)

A Woman's Place Ireland

Here's a bit of history they don't teach you in school folks: the majority of women were denied the franchise in 1922. We posit that this exclusion at a fundamental moment of our state meant that the Treaty side swept the 1922 General Election.

What we have come to uncover is that Michael Collins along with Arthur Griffith conspired to deny women the vote because they knew that women, especially young women, were ardent Republicans.

The GE result would give Collins the mandate he felt he needed to go to war.

Listen as we recount the moment that led up to this, frankly treasonous act, by the pro-treaty side which would eventually lead to a theocratic male-dominant patriarchy denying women the right to abortion, to work and imprisionment in the home.

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SOURCES

Rosemary Cullen Owens Smashing Times: A History Of the Irish Suffrage Movement 1889-1922

Shannon Area History Group - Ordinary women in extraordinary times https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1922-03-02/23/ THOMAS MOHR - THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF THE IRISH FREE STATE - https://www.jstor.org/stable/44026835 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/was-1918-a-false-dawn-for-irish-women-1.3705917

Clips used:

Mary MacSweeney debated along with Michael Collins and Eamon DeValera

in the historic Anglo-Irish Treaty Debates. Her no-compromise

rebublicanism really comes across in the speech. Performed by Christina

O' Sullivan for UCC Philosoph Society. Directed by Sean Creagh and Owen

Murphy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yYLVeeU8W4