"And They'll March with Their Brothers to Freedom"

Between the years 1900 and 1923, women in Ireland played an integral role in the nationalist movement. While several nationalist groups had female members, the women also founded their own nationalist organizations, Inghindhe na hEireann (Daughters of Ireland) and Cumann na mBan (Council of Women). These two groups indicated two different phases of the nationalist movement: Inghinidhe embodied the political and cultural aspects of women's participation in the move for Irish freedom, but Cumann na mBan, which had been organized as an auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers (later the IRA), added military activities to their agenda. Some Irish suffragists disliked nationalist women's groups because they felt that these drew recruits away from their ranks. At the same time, nationalist women ran their own suffrage campaign by helping the men in their revolutionary activity, which ultimately ended in women's equal citizenship in the first year of the Free State. Guerilla warfare, in particular, caused an expansion of women's roles and allowed them to transgress gendered boundaries. After the war women were not simply sent back to home, they continued their political work and agitated against new anti-feminist legislation. This thesis argues against many historians of Cumann na mBan who focus on the losses, rather than the achievements by the organization and its impact on women's roles in Ireland; women were agents of change who left a permanent impact on their political environment