Women MPs from Northern Ireland: Challenges and Contributions, 1953–2020

This article investigates women’s representation as Northern Ireland (NI) MPs in the House of Commons since 1953. The central argument of the study is that the political and cultural positions dominant at the formation of NI in the early 20th century reverberate through the generations and continue to inform women’s political under-representation today. The article provides an historical context for women’s political and public participation from the 1950s, highlighting the gendered political culture in which this engagement took place. It examines the additional freezing effect of the ethno-national conflict on women’s civic and political involvement from the 1970s–1990s. In terms of women’s Westminster contributions, the article focuses on the period following the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast agreement and details the extent of women’s candidacies in general elections. It highlights their participation in parliamentary voting, and some of the issues to which they have contributed. The study shows the influence of a conservative, gendered political culture on the issues that have engaged women MPs from Northern Ireland. The article concludes that Northern Ireland’s privileging of male power continues to frame the political agendas and work of women MPs.

This article investigates women's representation as Northern Ireland (NI) MPs in the House of Commons since 1953. The central argument of the study is that the political and cultural positions dominant at the formation of NI in the early 20 th century reverberate through the generations and continue to inform women's political under-representation today. The article provides an historical context for women's political and public participation from the 1950s, highlighting the gendered political culture in which this engagement took place. It examines the additional freezing effect of the ethno-national conflict on women's civic and political involvement from the 1970s-1990s. In terms of women's Westminster contributions, the article focuses on the period following the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast agreement and details the extent of women's candidacies in general elections. It highlights their participation in parliamentary voting, and some of the issues to which they have contributed. The study shows the influence of a conservative, gendered political culture on the issues that have engaged women MPs from Northern Ireland. The article concludes that Northern Ireland's privileging of male power continues to frame the political agendas and work of women MPs.
During the 1914-18 period, attitudes towards Home Rule further polarized in Ireland. There was a rise in support for militant republicanism, Sinn Féin and independence from British rule following the inept handling of the 1916 Easter Rising aftermath by the Liberal government. Unionist leaders continued to press their case for the exemption of Ulster from Home Rule measures. Furthermore, there was a serious erosion of trust between the moderate nationalist IPP, led by John Redmond MP, and the Asquith government over the Liberal party's plan to exclude Ulster from the Irish self-government provisions (Jackson, 2004: 183-187). The enfranchisement of women over 30 and all adult men increased the 1918 general election electorate on the island from 700,000 to over 2 million voters. The unfolding political events mobilized this new cadre of voters, and turnout averaged 68% in contested constituencies. The IPP was roundly defeated by the radical republican Sinn Féin party, whose candidates won 73 of the 105 parliamentary seats. The IPP, who went into the election with 63 Westminster seats, emerged from the election with only six MPs. Carson's Unionists dominated in Ulster, winning 23 of the 38 seats in the nine counties (Macardle, [1937(Macardle, [ ] 1968Coakley, 2018). As the illustration shows, Ireland was partitioned electorally, if not politically (Figure 1).
In the aftermath of the 1918 election, the issue of British rule in Ireland once again came to the fore. Prime Minister Lloyd George introduced the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, designed to bring a limited form of self-government to both parts of the island and to which each administration could send representatives to a Council of Ireland, designed as a vehicle for enabling Irish unity. The Act received royal assent on 23 December 1920. It partitioned the island into Northern Ireland, comprising six north-east counties, and Southern Ireland, comprising the remainder of the island. 4 4 See the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, available from the Legislation.gov.uk website at http://www. legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1920legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/ /67/pdfs/ukpga_19200067_en.pdf [accessed 17 April 2020. The six north-east counties were Antrim, Armagh, Londonderry, Down, Fermanagh, Tyrone.

Galligan: Women MPs from Northern Ireland 4
Following this Act, on 3 May 1921 Northern Ireland came into legal effect as a selfgoverning region of the United Kingdom with a parliament at Stormont in Belfast.
The devolution of government to Northern Ireland was given a mixed reception by unionists. Indeed, in a grudging acceptance of the self-rule it bestowed, James Craig remarked, ' as a final settlement and supreme sacrifice in the interest of a peace the Act of 1920 was accepted by Northern Ireland' (quoted in Mansergh, 1936: 17). Yet, on the opening of the new parliament on 22 June 1921, the occasion was presented as a loyalist victory, a due compensation for years of patriotism and sacrifice in the name of the Union (Jackson, 2004: 232). becoming an independent self-governing entity with Dominion status, known as the Irish Free State (Mansergh, 1934: 30-42, 45-46). On 18 April 1949, the state was declared a republic following the enactment of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 by the Irish Parliament (Oireachtas).
The developments between 1920-1922 offered a political resolution to the divergent identity-based demands of nationalists and unionists in Ireland. However, in both cases, internal violence ensued over these new political arrangements. Over 1500 people were killed in the course of the Irish Civil War (June 1922-May 1923 after the Anglo-Irish Treaty, while in Northern Ireland violent conflicts took the lives of over 600 people (Walker, 2012: 7). The issues involved in this period, and the legacy of violence, continued to dominate electoral politics in both parts of Ireland in the following decades, with a consequent sidelining of gender issues.

Northern Ireland: a sectarian state 1922-1970
From the outset, Northern Ireland's political institutions were designed to facilitate unionist interests. An early casualty of the representative democratic function was the abandonment of proportional representation (PR) as an electoral system. Mindful of the need to include minority communities in the governance process, the 1920 Act had provided for PR, in single transferable vote form (STV) and multi-member constituencies. PR was opposed by unionists during negotiations on the 1920 Act and repeatedly thereafter on the grounds of cost, unwieldy constituency size and its facilitation of multiple party representation. Of these, the point on multiplicity of parties was closest to unionist fears, as a result of which 'the stability of the Government would be threatened, and that ultimately the traditional divisions in Ulster politics would disappear' (Mansergh, 1936: 136). Unionists also distrusted the Boundary Commission, which was provided for in the Anglo-Irish Treaty in order to Galligan: Women MPs from Northern Ireland 6 decide on the precise delineation of the border between the two states. Unionists feared that this provision was a ruse to make Northern Ireland unviable. Their response was to ensure a unionist hold on power so as to control the fate of the new political entity. In 1922, the Northern Ireland government abolished PR for local government, and reverted to the simple majority system in single member constituencies. This consequently necessitated a restructuring of the constituencies: in nationalistdominated districts, such as Derry/Londonderry, Omagh and Enniskillen, the local government boundaries were redrawn to ensure unionist electoral victory (Mansergh, 1936: 138-139;Jackson, 2004: 259-260). In 1929, PR was abolished for elections to the Northern Ireland parliament. The motivation for this move, according to Walker (2012: 21), was to prevent the election of independents, temperance candidates and members of minor parties from the unionist family that threatened the dominance of Craig's Ulster Unionist Party. Interestingly, Westminster elections continued using the majoritarian, or first-past-the-post, system (Figure 2). Unlike local government men who were really out to cut their throats if opportunity arose' (quoted in Jackson, 2004: 268). Yet, that Brooke felt compelled to make this statement points to the fact that many Protestants employed, and continued to employ, Catholic workers.
With only rare exception, Catholics were excluded from positions of power and influence in the civil service, the judiciary, and the police. Given the higher family size of Catholics in the region at that time (the mean family size ranged from 4-6 children, compared with the 2-4 for Protestant families), many Catholics emigrated to find employment. In the 1950s, one-third of school leavers -the majority of which were Catholic -emigrated to find work (Rowthorn, 1981: 3-5;Jackson, 2004: 265). By 1971, Catholic unemployment was at 14%, over twice the rate of Protestant unemployment (Rowthorn, 1981: 6-8 on the outskirts of Derry city (Jackson, 2004: 263;Cochrane, 1999: 22-23).
Sectarian animosity turned to sectarian violence in the following months, and the O'Neill government was forced to request support from the UK government to maintain law and order. On 14 August 1969, the British Army arrived in Northern Ireland. Initially accepted by nationalists and the Catholic community as peace-keepers, the perception of the Army's role changed due to a number of insensitive actions including imposing a curfew in the nationalist Falls Road in West Belfast, and house raids in nationalist areas. The army was no longer perceived as a protector of the nationalist community from loyalist violence. Thereafter the region spiraled into ethnic and anti-state violence for the following three decades, with the loss of over 3,200 lives and many more injured (Guelke, 1999: 33). The death of fourteen citizens, shot by British paratroopers as they took part in an anti-internment march in Derry/Londonderry on 30 January 1972, brought devolved government to an end and introduced direct rule from London on 1 April 1972 (Birrell, 2009: 6-7).
Following twenty-five years of continuous conflict, a tenuous peace process was boosted by the Irish Republican Army's announcement of a ceasefire on 31 August 1994 (Mitchell, 1999: 111-112 (Wilford 1999: 285-303). This election marked the beginning of a new era of peaceful democratic governance of Northern Ireland that has continued, albeit with complications and interruptions, to the present day (Coakley and Todd, 2020: 453-460, 533-538).  (Urquhart, 2018: 470). This expression of Ulster nationhood, and women's subsidiary place within it, was to shape the parameter of women's political participation in the century to follow.

A gendered political culture
In parallel to the forging of an Ulster identity, the formation of an Irish separatist identity was underway, characterized as a Gaelic, Catholic and independent Ireland.
On 2 April 2014, Cumann na mBan (the Women's Council) was established by a group of women nationalists to support the exclusively male Irish Volunteer Force.
Although women in the Irish revolution appeared to have a more agentic role than that of their unionist sisters, the founding sentiments of Cumann na mBan reinforced gender norms. As Margaret Ward observed '…it was acceptable for the male organization [Irish Volunteers] to enter into debate, but not for their female counterpart in case this led to "disunion". The political arena was to be reserved for men, while women's role was to "put Ireland first" by helping to arm the men' (Ward, 1995: 93). This template for women's political role, as supporters rather than as leaders, held fast thereafter (Ward, 1995: 248).
Thus, as the identity of the emerging nations Ulster and Ireland, formed at the turn of the 20 th century, the 'rigid masculine tradition' (Ward, 1995: 248)  candidates, of whom nine were returned as Stormont MPs (Wilford, 1999: 199). All were from unionist or liberal political traditions. None came from the nationalist/ Catholic community, even though nationalists held about one-fifth of the seats. The exclusion of women from political life in Northern Ireland had deep roots in the political and social conservatism shared by both communities. As Wilford notes: 'When sectarian tension and conflict escalated, as was the case at both Stormont's birth and its eventual demise, the virtual male monopoly of the Northern Ireland parliament was all the more apparent' (Wilford, 1999: 199).

Women in social and public life, 1953-1997
On 15  could plausibly be claimed that she represented a man'. Ford fitted this profile and she was returned unopposed to her father's seat in the by-election of April 1953. In this regard, she was following the pattern of 'male equivalence' as an already well established route to politics for women: of the total of 38 female MPs elected prior to the 1945 general election, ten owed their position, at least in part, to being a substitute for a former male MP (Harrison, 1986: 626).
In the ten general elections held between 1955 and 1987, women's candidacies in Northern Ireland remained in single-digit numbers and percentages ( why there were so few women? The answer lies in the interaction of cultural norms and ethno-national conflict that combined to restrict the political space for women during the second half of the twentieth century.

Religious beliefs and women's role
Northern Ireland was a deeply religious society throughout the 20 th century, even as religiosity was declining elsewhere in Britain. This attachment to religion is a way of fostering public and political identity in a divided society (Mitchell, 2017: 94).  (Devine, 2013: 478, Ward, 2002. Morgan (1996), in summarizing Northern Ireland social attitudes surveys since the 1970s, concludes that 'throughout the community women's roles are still frequently defined in terms [of] responsibilities to home, family and church'. This normative social consensus on the role of women was reinforced through the religious iconography employed by both unionist and nationalist communities to shape a communally-endorsed idealized femininity (McGivern, 1980;Deiana, 2013). Ward and McGivern (1980: 69)  This gendered imagery is repeated in the political culture -nationalists represent Ireland as a Celtic female warrior or an old woman; unionists draw on biblical tropes of selfless women, devoted to their families and the union of the British state, or as a woman in need of male protection and defence (Morgan, 1996;McKane, 2018: 334). 7 These tropes of female purity (Catholic) and self-subordination (Protestant) had a political purpose: they represented group identity and marked the difference between the two communities. They also served a cultural identity purpose: the social control on women acted to regulate female sexuality and preserve communal identity (McCormick, 2014: 207-208).
The highly gendered framing of women's public participation, fashioned during the early decades of the century, endured into modern times (Gilmartin, 2018;Braniff and Whiting, 2016). In the words of a feminist community activist from Derry: 'The traditional link between Nationalism (both Orange and Green) and their respective churches has ensured that the ultra-conservative view of women as both the property of, and the inferior of, men remains strongly entrenched in Irish society' (Harkin andKilmurray, 1985, quoted in Bourke et al., 2002: 386). For women to step outside these roles, and outside the family, was an almost unconscionable transgression of the gender norms dominant in both communities in Northern Ireland (Ward and McGivern, 1980: 71). This patriarchal attitude persists, especially among unionism.
In 2012, speaking on women's role in politics, a male DUP councillor observed: '…the old tradition is that the women back up the man and that's especially in rural areas and Northern Ireland is largely a rural area so what else can you expect?' (quoted in Braniff and Whiting, 2015: 12).
Not surprisingly, women's participation in electoral politics was low, despite their high involvement in local issues. In 1972, women constituted only 8% of local councillors. By 1997, women's representation in local councils had increased to a mere 14%. The bedding down of the peace process, and a reorganization of local government, yielded a gradual increase in women's local council seat-holding to 26% in 2019, though lower than in England (34%) and the European average (33%). 8 Following the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, which brought three decades of ethno-national conflict to an end, women took 14 seats (13%) in the new 108-seat Northern Ireland Assembly. This result was far from the explicit commitment to gender equality in political and public life enshrined in the Agreement (Cracknell, 2016: 8). By 2017, women's seat-share increased to 27 (30%) (Russell, 2017: 14). Also,

Gender, work and welfare
The welfare state contract in the post-war years also reinforced traditional gender roles: men were family breadwinners, women left paid employment on marriage to care for the family. Indeed, Beveridge's oft-quoted view of married women's societal role fitted the conservatism of the society: the work of married women was 'vital though unpaid, without which their husbands could not do their paid work and without which the nation could not continue' (Wilson, 1977: 150, quoted in Blackburn, 1995. Nonetheless, the expansion of the welfare state during the 1950s, intended to bring Northern Ireland's crumbling services into line with those in Britain, led to a rapid increase in public sector employment: between 1954 and 1970, there was a three-fold increase in second level teachers, and a doubling of nursing, medical and dental staff (Rowthorn, 1981: 5 (Kremer and Curry, 1987;Wilford et al., 1993: 341). Nonetheless, the rising tide of social protest -mirroring social activism in other societies -brought the issue of gender inequality to the fore.

Challenging the 'armed patriarchy'
The women's movement emerged in 1975, after a period of localized mobilization on specific issues (Connolly, 1999;Roulston, 1989 (Loughran, 1986). Similarly, there were divisions on supporting the Peace People, co-founded by two women to bring the violence to an end (Roulston, 1989: 232-233). Ultimately, due largely to a significant divergence of views on the conflict, the movement was unable to unite women in a cross-community focus on women's rights (Breitenbach, 2003: 90). In the 1980s, many feminists became involved in single-issue groups, such as Women's Aid, others joined Sinn Féin (the political wing of republicanism), while still others re-embedded themselves in trade union activity, devoted their energies to establishing women's centres, focused on promoting integrated education, or entered the burgeoning field of state-sponsored activity on equal rights in employment (McWilliams, 2002: 374-377). Over the course of the following decade, feminists became fluent in articulating an inclusive discourse that spanned the fissures of sectarianism and focused on securing rights for all women.
The experience of communal activism from the 1960s through to the 1990s prepared a generation of politicized feminists to take advantage of the emerging peace process and establish the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition (NIWC) in 1996 (Fearon, 1999;Cowell-Meyers, 2014). Despite the predictably misogynistic response of some party leaders to the arrival of the Women's Coalition -similar to that meted out to Nancy Astor in the House of Commons -the party offered an alternative to the dominant sectarian mode of politics (Thane, 2020: 5;Kilmurray and McWilliams, 2011;Hinds, 1999;Nolan-Haley and Hinds, 2003: 397-398). The existence of the women's party also prompted other parties to attend to the representation of women among their ranks and pay some attention to women's policy issues (Cowell-Meyers, 2014: 70-72). However, the cross-community nature of its politics sat uneasily within the power-sharing structures. In the years that followed, the NIWC found itself marginalized as party competition for dominance in the Assembly became more intense (Murtagh, 2008: 30 In sum, sectarian politics combined with a conservative religiosity and patriarchal social norms shaped women's scope to partake in Northern Ireland's public sphere. At local level, women in nationalist and unionist communities shaped their political activism within this framework (Ward and McGivern, 1980: 68-69;McMinn and Ward, 1985 (Harkin and Kilmurray, 1985). These conditions formed the backdrop to women's contestation of general elections and participation in Westminster from the 1950s onwards.

Northern Ireland Women in Westminster
While Patricia Ford could claim in 1953 to be the first woman to represent a Northern Ireland constituency in Westminster, she was not the first woman MP to be returned at a general election. This distinction fell to Florence Patricia McLaughlin (UUP, West Belfast, 1955-1964. A further 11 women have held seats in the House of Commons as of 2020 (Table 3).
Their political affiliations reflect the divided politics of Northern Ireland: unionist and nationalist representation has been equal with six MPs from each community.
Bernadette Devlin's political position was more complex -a voice for anti-capitalist, working class and civil rights politics, in a constitutionalist tradition. Naomi Long, too, eschewed the ethno-national divide, identifying with conventional liberal and non-sectarian politics.

Contextual factors and selection experiences
Although the 13 female MPs from Northern Ireland have had their own unique political journeys, some patterns can be discerned that link to more general patterns of women's representation. Before the women's liberation movement of the 1970s, women's political fortunes in Ireland were largely dependent on family connections to politics, specifically being related to a former male politician (Carty, 1980: 94, Harrison 1986). This observation clearly applies in the case of Patricia Ford, who was

Galligan: Women MPs from Northern Ireland 24
women's political presence but stopped short of promoting candidate gender quotas as a mechanism for increasing women's political representation (AERC, 2015).
Indeed, the modest action points in the report are symptomatic of party resistance to women's political representation that continues to be a feature of Northern Ireland's political culture.

Women MPs Parliamentary Record since 1998
In In this section, we explore the contribution of the five female MPs with completed parliamentary terms to the working of the House of Commons. In addition to examining their expressed political interests and voting record, we will consider  fear is not what this does to or for England, which in truth is very little, but what it potentially does to the fabric of our Union'. 11 Sylvia Hermon (Independent) and Margaret Ritchie ( Controls. Sylvia Hermon and Naomi Long also served on the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission -a statutory body (Table 5).
This data suggests that, aside from Pengelly who followed a more internationalist agenda, women MPs from Northern Ireland pursued the interests of the region in Westminster.

The constitutional issue
Representatives from Northern Ireland engaged closely with the parliamentary debate on English Votes for English Laws (EVEL), as the above discussion shows.
Sylvia Hermon consistently raised the constitutional position of Northern Ireland.
In addition to her interest in EVEL, she sought to tease out the constitutional       Northern Ireland's female MPs can be tracked through examining the issues that they have fully supported or opposed in plenary sessions of the House. For this study, we first examined the policy areas which more than one woman MP either fully supported (100% on the rating) or opposed (0%). These policy areas aggregated multiple legislative proposals over three decades, providing a dataset of individual votes relevant to the policy field. A first step was to isolate the policy fields of common interest to two or more women MPs from Northern Ireland. This yielded ten separate legislative proposals, covering abortion (3 bills), higher education (2 bills 23 Belfast Telegraph, 18 June 2020, 'Parliament's approval of NI abortion laws "one of the darkest days in NI"', available at https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/parliaments-approvalof-ni-abortion-laws-one-of-the-darkest-days-in-ni-39294506.html, [accessed 11 September 2020]. Make no mistake about it: there is no good way to do Brexit. But this version is markedly worse than its previous iterations. It creates barriers to trade and introduces new levels of bureaucratic complexity. It is silent on workers' rights, and on social justice and the rebalancing of the global economy. It will damage Britain's economy. It will cause significant collateral damage to Ireland-north and south. It will further erode the resources available to public services, which are already reeling from a decade of austerity that has-certainly where I live, and I suspect here too-decimated the health service, gripped working families and emboldened inequality. 24 Sylvia Hermon (Independent) also consistently held an opposing position, even though her former colleagues in the Ulster Unionist Party supported the Conservative government's withdrawal measure. Emma Little-Pengelly (DUP) aligned with the Conservatives, in keeping with her party's agreement to support the minority government on the issue.

Conclusion
This article sought to present an analysis of the contribution that women MPs In the House of Commons, all female MPs articulate Northern Irish interests and seek to influence policy to take account of the special circumstances of the region. Aside from Sylvia Hermon, they have not sought to specifically represent the women of Northern Ireland, or gave recognition to the women's manifesto issues put forward by women's groups at successive local and general elections. In all, while women MPs from Northern Ireland articulated the constitutional, economic and social needs of the region with vigour, they worked within the male-gendered parameters of establishment politics. The dominance of male power since the foundation of Northern Ireland has cast a long, gendered shadow on the views and work of Northern Ireland's women MPs in the House of Commons.