EILISH ROONEY

WOMEN’S EQUALITY IN NORTHERN IRELAND’S

TRANSITION: INTERSECTIONALITY IN THEORY

AND PLACE

ABSTRACT. Women are invisible in mainstream analyses of the Northern Irish

conflict. The prodigious literature is uninformed by gender analysis. These absenceshave discursive and material implications for tackling women’s inequality in a societyin transition from armed conflict. Feminist intersectional theory counters andcomplicates essentialist constructions of identity. It aids understanding of the

Northern Irish context by bringing into view issues of gender, sect and class. Thetentative intersectional theoretical framework developed in this article is tested in anempirical study of women’s poverty. This supports the argument that intersectional

analysis is required if the policy approach to women’s equality in Northern Ireland isto benefit the most marginalised women and thereby improve the prospects ofbuilding a more stable and peaceable society.

KEY WORDS: conflict, equality, feminism, intersectionality, Northern Ireland/North of Ireland

INTRODUCTION

Women’s equality in the North of Ireland, unlike decommissioning ofweapons or rerouted parades, is never a topic that attracts interna-tional attention. This is unsurprising given the North’s mainstreamconflict narrative and perennial preoccupation with key players.Women’s equality has never been one of them and women are rarelyplayers (Rooney and Woods, 1995; Rooney, 2004). However, it mightreasonably be supposed that the poverty experienced by the Catholicand Protestant women living in some of the most deprived areas of

Feminist Legal Studies (2006) 14:353–375 � Springer 2006DOI 10.1007/s10691-006-9032-z

the North and frequently coming into view on television screensacross the globe would be a research-based concern of the EqualityCommission for Northern Ireland (E.C.N.I.).1 It might also beexpected that the academic community would be interested inundertaking the necessary research in an effort to eradicate thispoverty. However, it appears not to be so. In Osborne and Shuttle-worth’s (2004) landmark review of a generation of fair employmentlegislation for the E.C.N.I., no chapter is devoted to women. Not-withstanding over thirty years of legislation, there is in this publica-tion not even a page numbered reference for ‘women’ in the index.2

Women are simply not on the equality radar.The focus of the equality debate in the North is the persistent

sectarian unemployment differentials between Catholic and Protes-tant men.3 The impact of these and other community differentialsupon the poorest women has never been examined. Yet, as Daly(1989) found in a seminal study of women’s poverty in the Republicof Ireland, women are most likely to bear the burdens of rearingchildren alone, to be in the low paid and unofficial labour market, tohave less disposable income and, when married, to have less share ofand less control over family incomes. The E.C.N.I. admits that therehas been no similar research into the plight of marginalised women inthe North.4

It was this absence of women from consideration in the equalityagenda that prompted the initial impetus for this article. The work ofmaking women visible in these discourses and within the equalitydebate more generally led me to feminist discourse analysis andintersectional feminist theory better to understand why women are

1 The E.C.N.I. merged the Fair Employment Commission, the Equal Opportu-nities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Counciland oversees the equality legislation resulting from the 1998 Good Friday (Belfast)

Agreement (Agreement). The signatories to the Agreement affirmed ‘the right toequal opportunity in all social and economic activity, regardless of class, creed,disability, gender or ethnicity’ (p. 16) (my emphasis). ‘Class’ disappeared as a cate-

gory in the subsequent equality legislation.2 Gender, where it occurs, refers to sex difference, for instance see Miller (2004,

pp. 49–64).3 Catholic men remain almost twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestant men

whilst Catholic women are over twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestantwomen, National Statistics Online: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=965&Pos=6&ColRank=1&Rank=224.

4 Letter to the author from the E.C.N.I. (January, 2005); see more detaileddiscussion below.

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being overlooked, how this might be highlighted, and what to doabout it.

The tasks of addressing women’s inequalities in a politicallydivided, sectarian society in transition from armed conflict are com-plex and vital. The first thing to notice is the invisibility of womenand gender in explanations of the conflict itself, then to see how thisinvisibility is reflected in the equality agenda. The equality commit-ments in the Agreement5 are an attempt to redress the failures of thestate of Northern Ireland and its legacy of institutionalised sectari-anism. In what follows, I reflect upon the advances and manoeuvresmade in feminist theorising and activism in a range of discourses.Indeed, some fragile feminist advances themselves can be problematicin societies in conflict. My aim is to raise the issue of women’s povertyand to suggest ways for the E.C.N.I. to begin to address it. Anintegral theoretical aim is to show how including women and devel-oping gender-sensitive analyses can deepen understanding of con-temporary conflicts and historical processes of state formation as wellas transitions from conflict to stability. It is partly preliminary work,showing where further work is needed and encouraging others intothe field.

The article comprises two parts. In part one ‘‘Women in Place’’,theoretical insights gained from intersectionality theory, as well asfrom a range of other feminist sources, are used to make theargument that gender plays a key role in conflict narratives. Threeintersectional aspects of recognition and redistribution in feministcritical race perspectives are useful for work on gender inequalities inthe North of Ireland. Of first importance are the forms of conceal-ment that constitute and govern public discourse and their implica-tions for feminist thinking. Being invisible in the discourse or beingassumed to be included though not mentioned, is one form ofconcealment. Mentioning ‘women’ in the literature whilst failing to

5 These are set out in the Northern Ireland Act 1998, Chapter 47, Part VII, Section

75. S.75 imposes the statutory duty on public authorities in carrying out their dutiesto: pay due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity between personsof different religious belief, political opinion, racial group; age; marital status; or

sexual orientation; between men and women generally; between persons with adisability and those without; and between persons with dependants and personswithout. I focus on the intersectional dimension of religious and political inequalitiesgiven the importance such issues have for the peace process (Committee for the

Administration of Justice [C.A.J.], 2006). It is equally important to counter thesilence on women’s equality.

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bring the concept of gender into play is another form of concealment(as is a focus on gender which bypasses women). In the North there isthe additional political gesture of avoiding allusions to women in asectarian context. This works to conceal women, obviate gender andignore the many inegalitarian consequences of sectarianism. Occa-sionally, this avoidance is breached when women are hailed in par-ticular ways in the conflict narrative. In this context, the otherwiseconcealed female presence often carries powerful rhetorical authority.

A second concern is with the ways in which ‘differences’ of gender,sect and class may be construed as divisive. This is particularlychallenging for a feminist politics that would unite women around‘women’s’ interests while a third important consideration, examinedmore fully in part two ‘‘Women’s Equality in Transition’’, is withhow empirical data on inequalities and forms of discrimination areconceived of, and integrated into, intersectional analyses of gender,sect and class. Here, the tentative theoretical framework is tested.This theory-to-practice section encompasses an empirical study(Rooney, 2004) of women’s poverty in the most disadvantaged par-liamentary constituency in the North – West Belfast – and addressesthe question that set this article in motion in the first place, namely,what is the E.C.N.I. doing about appalling levels of women’s pov-erty? I explain why the issue of community differentials within the‘women’s sector’6 is problematic for groups tactically united on issuesof common interest. It has been found that women from the poorestareas are silent for the sake of unity (Rooney, 2002). Indeed, the unityof the women’s sector was proffered by the E.C.N.I. as part of thereason why it failed to acknowledge women’s religious and politicalinequalities in its submission to the United Nations Committee forthe Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (C.E.D.A.W.)(Cross, 2003).7

The introduction of women into the equality agenda and analysingtheir absence from conflict discourse will begin the all-important taskof destabilising the hegemonic masculinity of Northern Irish politics,including binary ways of thinking about equality. The call in thisarticle for the equality agenda to focus upon women’s poverty indisadvantaged areas such as West Belfast is a strategic intervention ina volatile political arena.

6 The women’s sector refers to around 280 women’s groups and networks (Roo-

ney, 2002).7 The next U.K. submission is due in 2007.

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WOMEN IN PLACE

Women in View

If you want to learn about women in the Northern Irish conflict, youwould do well to steer clear of the mainstream academic analyses andkey texts. In the vast literature generated by this conflict, women areeither invisible or assumed to be included (see for example, McGarryand O’Leary, 1995).8 Occasionally, women are mentioned in passingin an author’s effort to include them in an index. Indeed, the oddreference only serves to underscore their absence. This absence mayinitially seem simply a matter of common sense – men dominate inthe politics, in the war and in the negotiations, so the discoursesimply reflects the ‘reality’ of sex segregation. But this uncritiqued‘common sense’ reality is one of the disappearing acts of ‘‘legitimisingdiscourses’’, whereby women’s invisibility goes unnoticed andunremarked (Lauret, 2000). Along with it, also unnoticed, goes anycritique of the hegemonic masculinity of the discourse.9 The ‘disap-pearance’ of women in the literature of the Northern Irish conflict is adiscursive mechanism whereby women’s subordination is ‘‘routinelyaccepted’’ (Thomson, 2005). Women are not ‘there’ in the discourse;neither are they ‘there’ in the power play where things happen.10

Effectively, they are kept apart from the conflict in the literature andare simply not visible in any way that reflects their presence in thepopulation or understands their positioning in the gender regime andtheir role in the conflict. The masculinity of key actors is alsounnoticed and taken for granted.11

To investigate how the gender regime informs and even constituteswhat is visible or what appears to be there for analysis (mainly whatmen do and where they are) will take a writer, or indeed a reader,wanting to analyse the political manoeuvres of a given event orperiod into what appears to be a ‘diversion’ of work on ‘women in

8 There is no reference to women or gender in this standard text.9 Hegemony here is meant in the Gramscian sense referring to the maintenance of

and consent to class inequalities in democratic society (Connell, 1995, p. 77, cited in

Thomson, 2005, p. 4).10 17 of the 108 Members elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly are women

(15%). Sinn Fein has the highest number (7) whilst the Ulster Unionist Party hasnone.

11 Over 95% of conflict-related deaths in the North were of men and working-classareas paid the highest human costs (McKitterick et al., 1999; Hillyard et al., 2005).

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conflict’. Sometimes this work compounds the problem it seeks toremedy. The sole focus on women and avoidance of masculinity (andoften of women’s participation in conflict) consolidates the separa-tion of women within mainstream literature.12

The preoccupation of most writers on the Northern Irish conflicthas been in the more marketable arena of ‘power politics’, with thepersonalities, political parties and armed groups. In other words, ithas focused on those who, when it comes to negotiations, do thenegotiating. Other preoccupations in the literature are around mat-ters to be negotiated: arms, prisoners, policing, victims, criminaljustice, and, less so, human rights and equality. Added to this are thechallenges of the transitional period (Campbell et al., 2003). Theurgency of addressing matters related to conflict, and of influencingpolicy and politics, as well as the legitimate aim of catching an aca-demic market whilst it still remains open to a conflict that may be onthe wane in the wake of a new ‘war on terrorism’, all seem to mitigateagainst the theoretical tasks of gender analyses of the NorthernIrish conflict.13 It is with these theoretical tasks in mind that Iundertake to develop a working analysis of gender and women’sequality in transition.

The invisibility of women and the absence of gender awareness inthe established literature on the Northern Irish conflict is core tounderstanding how women get left out of account in the context ofconflict-related politics. The precarious role of women in conflictnarratives discursively maintains the invisibility of gender regimesoperating within conflict scenarios. This precarious role is vital to thesustenance of the narrative fiction that conflicts are gender-free.Indeed, the massive literature and mainstream analysis of theNorthern Irish conflict is gender-free. Women’s in/visibility in theconflict narrative conceals how gender regimes frame what is in view.Yet, gender as a key organising principle of conflicts that structuresthe discursive ‘‘frame for understanding’’ (Butler, 2002), is nowhereexamined in relation to the Northern Irish conflict.14

12 For a survey of feminist work in Northern Ireland see Rooney (1995); Crilly

et al. (2002); for an all-Ireland survey see Hill (2003).13 Arguably the ‘war on terror’ has revived interest in the Northern Irish conflict

(Campbell and Connolly, 2003).14 Notable feminist studies include Aretxaga (1997) (republicans); Cockburn

(1998) (cross-community); and two unpublished dissertations, Moore (1993) (Prot-estant women); Alison (2003) (republican women combatants).

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Theory in Place

The theoretical framework in this article is tentative in that itdeveloped around critical insights gained from various branches offeminist theory, from critical race theory and work on women inconflicts, as well as from transitional justice literature. The search tosee and understand how women figure in societies fissured by conflictsaround ‘identity’ led me to intersectional theory and efforts to analysethe interrelations of gender, sect and class. More specifically, inter-sectionality helps to reference how race and/or sect, class and genderwork as integrated regimes of inequality within historical processesand, as such, has several benefits in the Northern Irish context. First,the introduction of gender into thinking about equality deconstructsthe primary, binary way of thinking about equality in terms of sec-tarian (Catholic/Protestant) oppositions between men. It bringswomen into the frame. To some extent this mirrors the United States’experience, where race becomes the intersectional move qualifying thedominance of gender oppositions in ‘race-free’ feminist theory(Newman, 1999; Crenshaw, 2004). At the same time, intersectionalityqualifies the dominance of race oppositions in ‘gender-free’ racetheory. Intersectional theory further qualifies gender/sect categorieswith the introduction of social class. It brings into view issues ofpoverty.

The thesis under construction is that gender plays a key role inconflict discourse, disadvantaging women in particular ways. Inrelation to Northern Ireland, I argue that the gender regime is con-stitutive of sectarian and social class inequalities and not separable.Gender regimes structure discourse to ‘‘preclude certain kinds ofquestions’’ and construct certain kinds of narrative (Butler, 2002).Influential in my preliminary efforts to bring gender, sect and classinto view and into play in understanding the Northern Irish conflictare a range of feminist theorists who explore discursive, hegemonicsilences and their real world impacts in different contexts on women’slives. A useful tool in this exploration is feminist discourse analysisapplied to how women are sometimes hailed into view in conflictdiscourse (Parpart, 1993). This may be decisive at key moments whenthe presence of ‘women’ in the narrative confers legitimacy andauthority particularly to violent action taken by states on behalf ofwomen but from which women are normatively excluded.15 The

15 For instances from the US invasion of Afghanistan see Rawi (2004); Zalman(2003).

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erstwhile powerlessness of women in the narrative is at times strate-gically deployed in the management of the conflict to strong effect. Tobe on the side of ‘women’ and to have women onside appears to be anoccasionally unassailable strategic position. The woman occasionallyevoked in the official narrative in Northern Ireland fits an ideal pic-ture of one who is not involved in discredited politics; or at least not‘involved’ through her agency or consent. Neither is she implicated inthe grim, disgraced or shameful political ‘divide’ (Rooney, 2002). Thewoman depicted, constituted and claimed by (and occasionally layingclaim to) the discourse is a discursive construction with political,material and rhetorical effects. It is a construction of gender‘difference’.

The recognition of gender difference goes some way to bringingwomen into view. However, as Crenshaw (2004) comments, theknowledge that gender difference exists is only part of the theoreticalwork needed to understand what is going on:

The struggle over which differences matter and which do not is neither an abstractnor an insignificant debate among women. Indeed, these conflicts are about more

than difference as such; they raise critical issues of power (p. 411).

Of particular interest here is how gender regimes operate in a sec-tarian society that is ‘politically divided’. Introducing women into agender-free agenda reveals how gender is decisive in the conflictdiscourse and the equality agenda. The challenge eventually is toapply the theory-under-construction to the problem of the absence ofthe most marginalised women from the equality debate in the Northof Ireland. In part two the theoretical framework is tested in theempirical case-study of women’s poverty in West Belfast. The qual-itative dimension of the case-study supports the theoretical frame-work by exploring specific questions with key equality stakeholders,namely the E.C.N.I. and the academic community. The work ofasking questions ‘‘otherwise not considered’’ involves deconstructingframeworks of understanding. The theory under construction pre-pares the way for this approach. Throughout, I bear in mindConaghan’s (2000) feminist challenge that the critical testing groundof theory is not simply internal coherence but ‘‘an ability to deli-ver’’.16 Further research on women’s equality is needed as well as apolicy framework to ensure that the intersectional equality provisionsin the s.75 legislation practically impact upon the lives of the most

16 Conaghan, 2000, pp. 364–365.

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marginalised women, such as those living in the area considered in thecase-study.

Gender in a State

My approach to gender draws upon Knapp’s (2003) useful discussionand definition of gender within the frame of feminist sociology as acentral axis of dominance and inequality that structures contempo-rary society. Also pivotal are Conaghan’s (2000) insights into howgender is both ‘‘ignored and enshrined’’ in legal theory and discourseand has specific real world impacts that disadvantage women ingeneral. Conaghan’s point that the significance of gender is not‘‘practically diminished by its relative invisibility’’ leads her to arguefor the creation of ‘‘new knowledges which have the capacity both toliberate women ... and subvert the hegemonic power of men’’ (ibid.pp. 360–364). This ‘‘new knowledge’’ is to be drawn from giving voiceand authority to women and using women-centred approaches as a‘‘critical device’’ (Conaghan, 2000, p. 364). What is both useful andproblematic is the assertion that giving voice to women will elucidatethe problems of gender, class and sectarian discrimination in a placesuch as Northern Ireland, where women’s own accounts will gener-ally reflect their political location.17 The ‘giving voice to women’approach may work better in relation to legal discourse that, as wellas being blind to gender, appears to make no distinction betweenwomen.

Simply mentioning women or even focusing on women where theyare to be found in a conflict – as victims or, less often, as prisoners oractivists, and so on – may reveal little about the construction ofgender difference. Indeed, the focus upon women in a conflict, whilstignoring gender or adopting a ‘taken-for-granted’ attitude towards itmay compound the problem. It is not that everything is ‘gender’ northat ‘gender is everywhere’; ‘‘it is simply the case that nothing isontologically protected from [gender] that nothing is necessarily ornaturally or ontologically not [gender]’’ - which may be very likesaying that gender is everywhere, but it is not.18

Post-structural deconstruction and diffusion of the state into dis-course (Parpart, 1993, p. 440) is useful but problematic when lookingat the state in a situation of conflict such as is the case for the British

17 For examples see Crilly et al. (2002).18 This is an adaptation of Honig (1992, p. 225) on the everywhereness of ‘politics’.

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state in Northern Ireland. The state in conflict mobilises powerthrough its ability to ‘‘control knowledge and meaning, not onlythrough writing, but also through disciplinary and professionalinstitutions, and in social relations’’ (Parpart, 1993, p. 440). Themanagement of discourse is of fundamental importance. The Britishstate’s paradigmatic community-relations approach to the manage-ment of the Northern Irish conflict has resulted in a welter of ‘com-munity relations’ research and attitude surveys that fail to takereligious and political inequalities into account;19 moreover, theyremove the state’s responsibilities with regard to these. This discoursehelps to generate the terms within which sectarianism is understood asdysfunctional attitudes belonging to (mainly male) Catholics andProtestants, or as a pathological problem that the ‘two communities’(always working class) share equally. Structural inequalities disappearin a discourse that appears to provide recognition of ‘difference’ whilstcollapsing this difference into a matter of problematic attitudes. Theapproach is similar to multicultural discourse around racism in Brit-ain. Potential sources of conflict are handled by the state through anidentity discourse that appears to accommodate (and construct) dif-ference whilst doing nothing to materially change the circumstancesthat give rise to racism and its discriminatory consequences. This iscarried through in the state-managed narrative of the Northern Irishconflict on a range of levels, which include formal social policy andequality discourses as well as legal processes and the use of force (NıAolain, 2000). Despite their invisibility in the discourse, women andgender play key roles in all of this, locally and internationally, as wellas in historical processes that predate conflict. Much is at stake inintroducing women and gender into the frame. Understanding howgender and women have figured in ‘‘historical processes that, throughdiscourse position subjects and produce their experiences’’, to useScott’s (1992) analysis, is just beginning to be examined in Irishpostcolonial studies (Mac Suibhne and Martin, 2005). Perhaps the‘transitional moment’ opens a critical space to redress silences.

Intersectional Implications

A vital discursive manoeuvre is afoot in the occasional sighting of‘woman’ in conflict discourses and the virtual invisibility of gender in

19 On this McCrudden (2003) cautions that ‘‘if inequality is not tackled, sectari-

anism will not be tackled. Community relations activity that is not based on a notionof tackling inequality, is community relations built on sand’’ (p. 6).

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analyses of conflicts. In the context of the North, the separation ofwomen from the conflict and the subsuming of gender into notions of‘woman’ serve to prohibit key considerations of women’s equalityfrom the debate required, especially in relation to tackling povertygenerated over time.20 Furthermore, the linkage between structuralcauses of conflict and gender relations in Northern Ireland calls foran analytic approach that explores integrated regimes of genderinequality. The paradigm of intersectionality helps to reference howrace and/or sect, class and gender work as integrated regimes ofinequality in state formation.

Recognising how women are configured in conflict discourseserves to illustrate how intersectional analysis can deepen under-standing by reframing the issue in terms of understanding masculinityand the collectivisation of men into armed groups. Indeed, makinghegemonies of masculinity visible or, as some deconstructive analystsmight usefully have it, making men visible as particular kinds ofgender performers of masculinity when they are otherwise not visibleas men, is central for the integration of gender into analysis.

This suggests a practical and theoretical approach to excavating‘gender’ from between and within the sectarian binaries of Catholicand Protestant. It offers an approach that questions the specific waysthat gender is occluded in the Northern Irish conflict. It further offersan approach that seeks to identify specific ways that gender and sectare integrated into economic class relations, what the consequencesare, and how these may be made visible in order to be remedied. Theapplication of such an analysis could make a difference to under-standing conflicts more generally. It provides an interpretativeframework for thinking through how intersections of gender, sect andclass may shape experience and agency in a given political moment(Hill-Collins, 2004, pp. 69–70).

Sectarianism, or the structural working of sect in state formation,is not the same as race in the U.S. The construct and experience of‘race’ cannot simply be replaced, as it were, with the construct ‘sect’.However, the manner whereby intersectionality functions as a con-ceptual framework or heuristic device for describing the kinds of

20 The over time impacts indicate regional inequalities whereby the proportion ofCatholics in a census output area is directly related to how deprived it is. Catholicsmake up only 19.5% of the population in the 500 most affluent areas and 72% ofinhabitants in the 500 most deprived areas – an almost 30% over-representation gap

in the most deprived areas. See Special European Union Programmes Body Report(section 5) http://www.seupb.org/documents/UPTAKE%20REPORT.pdf

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things to consider has application in a sectarianised society, especiallyat a stage when sect is being institutionalised in post-Agreementmechanisms of governance (Rooney, 2000). At this stage it is crucialto recognise past harms. What Hill-Collins (2004) has to say of raceand state–citizen relations in the U.S. is insightful and full of caution.She observes that this relationship created ‘‘immutable group iden-tities. Individuals cannot simply opt in or out of racial groups,because race is constructed by assigning meaningful racial classifi-cations’’ (Hill-Collins, 2004, p. 67). Integral to making race matter,she avers, is the related ‘‘state distribution of social rewards to groupmembership [that] fosters a situation of group competition for scarceresources, [in the U.S.] policing the boundaries of group membershipbecomes more important’’ (Hill-Collins, 2004, p. 69). Classification inthe North is based upon sect and the political affiliation and historicalexperience that it denotes. Sectarianism, religious and politicalinequalities, and state-citizen relationships are most evident in themarginalised Catholic and Protestant working-class urban and ruralareas where ‘‘competition for scarce resources’’ is at a premium.Women may not be visible in this competition but addressingwomen’s poverty in deprived neighbourhoods may be one strategicway of defusing the competition and making life better for everyone.

The empirical study of women’s poverty in West Belfast thatfollows is the focus of the second part of this article. It is an effort todevelop a situated understanding and to apply theory to practice. Itbegins with the concrete details of social need indicators. Anotherkind of silence comes to the fore. It is the dire circumstances that thedata documents but cannot describe.

WOMEN’S EQUALITY IN TRANSITION

Concrete Details

Over 90,000 people live in the 17 electoral wards that make up theWest Belfast constituency stretching from Belfast city centre to thefoothills of Divis Mountain. The most deprived parliamentary con-stituency in the North, it is primarily made up of a Catholic,republican electorate, with some Protestant unionist wards.21 It isalso one of the most deprived areas in Western Europe in relation to

21 Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein, is the constituency’s Member ofParliament.

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employment, education, health, income, and child poverty (Hamiltonand Fisher, 2002). Furthermore, there is a correlation betweeninequality and poverty and areas that have ‘‘suffered the most andbeen most involved in the conflict’’ (Hillyard et al., 2005). WestBelfast is one such area. In 8 of the 17 electoral wards, 80% or moreof the children live in poverty. The various detrimental impacts onwomen with primary responsibility for the care of children areobvious. As noted above, these women are more likely to be loneparents, to have less disposable income and less control over familyincomes; they fill the ranks of the low paid and unofficial labourmarket (Daly, 1989). Other things follow – for example, high levels ofhealth deprivation and of drugs prescribed to women for anxiety ordepression.

Recently reported indices of deprivation, that comparatively rankselectoral wards, indicate that the situation is worsening (Noble et al.,2005). Between 2001 and 2005, 12 of the 17 West Belfast wardsincreased their rank of deprivation. The data on predominantlyCatholic and Protestant wards in West Belfast indicate differentforms and levels of social deprivation (Hamilton, 2002). Whilstcomparisons should be treated with caution, one of the challengesfacing policy-makers is to redress religious and political inequalitieswhilst ensuring that people in deprived areas, such as those in WestBelfast, are not made to pay, nor feel they are being made to pay, theprice of compensatory policies. As well as being unjust, this would becounterproductive (Rooney, 2000). What is urgently needed is aresourced policy approach that tackles inequality within a context ofoutcomes and time frames on the basis of objective social need. In theAgreement the British government pledged ‘‘a range of measuresaimed at combating unemployment and progressively eliminating thedifferential in unemployment rates between the two communities bytargeting objective need’’ (Agreement, 1998, p. 19). However, gov-ernment has failed to operationalise existing Targeting Social Need(T.S.N.) policy (C.A.J., 2006).22 The resulting lack of progressprompted a leading human rights advocate to assert that ‘‘the dis-parities that were at the heart of civil rights struggles nearly 40 yearsago are not much better now’’ (O’Brien, 2005).

22 See McCormack and McCormack (1995) for a critical review of T.S.Npublished over ten years ago. Furthermore, government has recently stated thatmajor Northern Irish policies such as the Investment Strategy (worth £16 billion and

estimated to create 16,000 jobs) do not ‘‘lend themselves’’ to an equality analysis(C.A.J., 2006).

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As has already been noted, women are off the radar in all of this.Whilst intersectionality theory can be used to bring women’s povertyinto the frame, as well as shedding light on unjust power relations, itdoes not rescue the equality agenda from the contentions of localparty politics. Legislation, research and social policy leadership arerequired to do that. The contentiousness of the equality debate meansthat women’s religious and political inequalities are seen as toodivisive for the women’s sector (Rooney, 2002). Despite the fact thatsome of these women have most to lose from being invisible to theagenda, the sector remains silent on all of this.23

The aim to advance the interests of the women’s sector inNorthern Ireland, has often led to tactical alliances that ‘enshrine’ orinvent a unity of women otherwise ‘divided’ by intersections ofgender, sect, and class (Rooney, 2003). So when the women’s sector isconsulted by the E.C.N.I. on women’s equality matters, ‘no onementions the war’ – or the religious and political inequalities resultingfrom a disputed legacy of institutionalised sectarianism.24 The unified‘woman’ in the sector is an outcome of ‘‘strategic essentialism’’ (seeConaghan, 2000, pp. 368–369). This is not to say that organisationsin the sector should be expected to take the lead in the debaterequired. The local work of the sector on women’s education, trainingand personal development undoubtedly has positive impacts (Cock-burn, 1998; McMinn, 2000). A focus on religious and politicalinequalities could be divisive and detrimental to the sector’s fragile ifexploitable ‘unity’. The urge for women’s unity in the wider Westernfeminist political project finds remarkable fulfillment in the ‘woman’from Northern Ireland who occasionally comes to prominence.25

This woman, like the woman critiqued in race-free feminist theory, iswithout colour and without class, or her religion, race or class doesnot appear to matter (Newman, 1999; Ware, 2000). She seems toaffirm a dream of uniting women in their own interests (Cockburn,1998; Rooney, 2002). The integral role of state formation, ofmasculinity and social class is erased in the same maneuver. These

23 See the Women’s Research and Development Agency’s comprehensive publi-cations and reports (http://www.wrda.net). My purpose is to explain the environ-

ment within which the groups operate.24 For E.C.N.I. links with women’s organisations: www.equalityni.org.25 The role of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition in the conflict narrative is

interesting in this regard. The coalition appeared to embody a politics beyond sec-

tarian division. At the same time the party took a principled stand regarding theinclusion in talks of political parties with ‘paramilitary’ links.

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powerful discursive fictions carry differential costs and benefits. Thepoorest women whose circumstances are rendered invisible pay forsilence about gender, sect and class. Government, the E.C.N.I. andthe academic community in Northern Ireland have responsibilitiesand duties in relation to all of this.

Commissioning Women’s Equality

In the course of exploring the ‘concrete details’ of women’s poverty inWest Belfast, I turned to the E.C.N.I. to see how it is addressingreligious and political inequalities experienced by the poorest women,like those in the study. The commission has a leadership role ofinfluencing government policy and engaging with civic society incarrying out its duties. These include working towards the elimina-tion of discrimination, including discrimination against women andthe promotion of equal opportunities for women. It has responsi-bilities for the equality legislation and has oversight of the publicsector statutory duty set out in s.75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998,which is the legislation earlier cited as ‘intersectional’ in its recogni-tion of various forms of discrimination experienced by people onintersecting grounds.26 The E.C.N.I. is a unique equality commissionin the U.K. in regard to the statutory duty legislation. This is why italone of the U.K. equality commissions compiled a submission toC.E.D.A.W. (Cross, 2003). The failure in the U.K.’s 5th PeriodicReport (1999) to C.E.D.A.W. to give detailed reference to s.75 leg-islation in Northern Ireland is the reason cited by the E.C.N.I. forcompiling its own subsequent submission (Cross, 2003). Such sub-missions are an important means for U.N. member states, which haveratified or acceded to the Convention, to monitor and communicateprogress on the elimination of discrimination against women.

I reasonably expected to find recommendations in the E.C.N.I.submission relating to all of the grounds of discrimination identified ins.75. However, the E.C.N.I. fails to make any recommendation inrelation to the first two discriminatory grounds in s.75, namely ‘‘reli-gious belief’’ and ‘‘political opinion’’. The omission is remarkable.Each of the other seven grounds named in s.75 is the subject of rec-ommendation.Moreover, additional grounds pertaining towomennot

26 Respondents to the U.K. government’s proposals to establish a single com-mission for equality and human rights have registered their concern that the statu-

tory duty approach to equality involves endless proceduralism and little substantiveprogress, see: www.cehr.gov.uk.

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referred to in the legislation are also cited in the recommendations.Indeed, naming additional forms of discrimination appears to indicatethat the commission is intent on building robustly upon the intersec-tional principle enshrined in the equality legislation. For instance, inrelation to women with disabilities, it calls for ‘‘a thorough analysis ofdisabled women’s economic position’’ (ibid. p. 6).27 This recommen-dation, however, is not extended to women of different religious beliefandpolitical opinion.Thequestion is,whynot?What is it aboutwomenand intersectional religious and political inequalities in NorthernIreland that results in silence from the commission in its submission toC.E.D.A.W.?

To tackle these questions, feminist discourse analysis comes intoplay again. The commission is a key institutional site where ‘‘meaningsare contested andpower relations are determined’’ (Parpart, 1993). Thefailure to name religious and political inequalities in relation to womensends the signal that sectarianism is solely a male preserve. Eitherreligious and political inequalities do not matter when it comes towomen, or they matter so much as to be too contentious, in which casethe languageof the legislation and its intersectional potential is set asidewhilst a strategy of avoidance is adopted. Either way, the potential ofthe legislation to make a difference is defeated. One conclusion is thatwomen are not seen, are ‘disappeared’, when religion and politics comeinto view in much the same way that women are separated from theconflict in the mainstream conflict narrative and literature. If thewomen who come into view in the commission’s recommendations toC.E.D.A.W. are categorically outside of the first two dimensions ofs.75, then the poverty experienced bywomen in places likeWest Belfastwill remain invisible to the equality agenda and the equality legislationcentral to the Agreement is diminished.

The s.75 omissions in the E.C.N.I.’s submission are even moreremarkable in view of C.E.D.A.W.’s formal consideration of theU.K.’s 5th Periodic Report (1999) where the expert panel made detailedcomment upon these omissions and registered its concern with reli-gious and political inequalities in Northern Ireland.28 The Northern

27 However, the E.C.N.I.’s own research on women with disabilities notes the

adverse impact of poverty on these women but it also fails to reference either indicesof social need or religious and political inequalities, see: http://www.equalityni.org/uploads/word/diswomenni1003.doc

28 See http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990610.WOM1132.html. The

panel noted the unemployment differential between Catholic and Protestant women(see Davies et al., 1995).

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Ireland Office Gender Equality Team responded that governmentactions were focused on the problem. However, in its subsequentsubmission, the E.C.N.I. has failed to name ‘Catholic’ women and‘‘their Protestant sisters’’ (to use C.E.D.A.W. language). In interviewand written questions I asked the commission why that was so.

None of the answers provided explains why the commission failedto make any recommendation relating to women and religious andpolitical inequalities in its submission. The commission acknowledgedthat there has been ‘‘relatively little social science research’’ in thisarea.29 It is odd then that no recommendation to C.E.D.A.W. calls forthis research to be carried out. By way of explanation for the lack ofthis research, the commission cited their landmark publication on fairemployment (Osborne and Shuttleworth, 2004) and the assertiontherein that, ‘‘conducting research in a divided society which wascharacterised by widespread violence posed particular problems to thesocial science community’’.30 What these problems are is not detailed.If the implication is that social scientists in gathering data may besubjected to violence, then that is a very serious matter. However,another explanation for a paucity of research may be more mundaneas well as serious. As FitzGerald (2004) in his Foreword to theE.C.N.I. publication comments, academic avoidance of sectarianissues in the North has a long history. Indeed, as he observes, thisavoidance predates the violent conflict (FitzGerald, 2004). The‘‘academic community’’ is not a community apart from the politicsand the conflict in the North of Ireland. It is a community that helps toproduce and manage the conflict discourse. Parpart’s (1993) decon-structive understanding of state power and the role of the academy asa site where meaning is produced is again useful:

The ability to control knowledge and meaning, not only through writing, but also

through disciplinary and professional institutions, and in social relations, is the keyto understanding power relations in society (Parpart, 1993, p. 440).

The industry of publications from academics (local and overseas) hashad direct and indirect impacts upon political and policy approachesin Northern Ireland. It has impacted upon understanding the conflictand in the development of a gender-free conflict narrative.

An explanation of E.C.N.I.’s omission of any recommendationrelated to religious and political inequalities and women may be the

29 E.C.N.I. letter to author, January, 2005.30 Osborne and Shuttleworth (2004, p. 10) cite Taylor (1988).

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belief that ‘difference’ cannot be raised as an issue of concern forwomen within the women’s sector, given the ‘unity’ upon which it isestablished and funding is premised. Indeed, during the interviewwith E.C.N.I. staff on the C.E.D.A.W. submission, the safeguardingof this ‘unity’ was proffered as one reason that the submission madeno such recommendation. However, ignoring sectarianism in thecontext of differences between women involves the erasure of reli-gious and political inequalities. Key issues of concern to the poorestwomen are then ignored in turn.31 All in all, the signs are that theintersectional potential of the equality legislation resulting from theAgreement is in danger of being squandered.

CONCLUSION

This article has drawn together some problems for feminist work thatwould adapt the promise of intersectionality as an approach inaddressing women’s equality in particular contexts. The problems areto do with the politics of time and place. Any examination of inter-sectionality in the Northern Irish context is surely driven to explorethe interplay of discrimination, inequality and state formation. Socio-economic conditions, as well as political, military and criminal justiceregimes, sustained the violent conflict in Northern Ireland for overthirty years. The sectarianism of the state has historical, economic,social class, cultural and political dimensions. These sectarian pat-terns, and the citizen relationships with the state that underpin them,have material and life chance meanings with cumulative impacts overtime (Rooney, 2000). In the North official equality discourse recog-nises that sect matters but it tends to construct it as a ‘difference’ withfairly neutral, evenly balanced consequences. Within this analysissectarianism and gender are constructed as outside one another andnot overlapping and intersecting. The challenge for the E.C.N.I. is torealise the intersectional potential of the legislation and in this way‘make a difference’ to the lives of the most marginalised women. Fairemployment legislation shows that it is possible to make progress.

The tentative theoretical framework of interdisciplinary andintersectional insights used here is drawn upon in a context theexploration of which may yield theoretical and practical rewards for

31 At an E.C.N.I. hosted women’s sector seminar (March, 2006) on C.E.D.A.W.

preparatory to the 2007 submission no reference was made to s.75; see: http://www.wrda.net/wrdanews/data/upimages/Cedaw210306.pdf

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the intrepid, feminist researcher. She has to be willing to face thecharge of being divisive in pointing the critical spotlight onto formsof sectarian discrimination embedded in the institutions and citizenrelations in the North of Ireland. This article has critiqued howcommunity differentials impact upon the lives of the poorest womenliving in West Belfast. The implications are more far-reaching.

In the course of the local empirical study and in working feministtheoretical insights into the local place and asking questions of theoryfrom this place, I was mindful of Joanne Conaghan’s challenge that itis the ‘‘ability to deliver’’ that is the measurement of effective con-ceptualisations of theory as well as feminist activism. Women in localgroups in Northern Ireland can point to education and training andsupport for women in their areas. I asked myself about the value ofan article that highlights religious and political inequalities when thepull of the discourse is towards ‘silence and evasion’, or as we sayhere, ‘whatever you say – say nothing’. Sectarianism is a divisive‘difference’. Arguably, that has been its colonial and class-basedfunction. Sectarianism and the religious and political inequalities anddivisiveness to which it gives rise have vital equality implications. It isnot a difference that is a ‘matter solely of one’s sense of self ’ –although it is integral to the sense of self of different people living in astate based on politicised, sectarian identities and that has undergoneover thirty years of violent conflict. However, as O’Reilly (1986)reflected in another context, ‘‘it is an often repeated belief of manywomen in Northern Ireland ‘there is more that unites Catholic andProtestant working-class woman than divides them’’’. She contendedthat it is ‘‘a brave one who begs to differ ... who, after all, wants to beseen as divisive or even sectarian?’’ But perhaps ‘delivery’ is notachieved without acknowledging difference and sometimes beingregarded as ‘divisive’.

POST-SCRIPT ON TRANSITION

I have used the labels ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ throughout thisarticle. The labels are meaningful in a state established on the basis ofa sectarian headcount. They are meaningful in the collection of dataon un/employment, the composition of the police service as well asdeprivation. They are meaningful in a society where over 90% ofpublic housing is predominantly Catholic or Protestant and whereover 95% of children attend Protestant (state) or Catholic (main-tained) schools. The labels are meaningful but they are not fixed.

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Their meanings change over time and circumstance, although it canbe difficult to see that. The labels may be in transition – like theNorthern Irish state. That is not to say that Northern Ireland is intransition to becoming some other kind of state vis-a-vis its rela-tionship with Britain. Neither is it to say that Northern Ireland is intransition out of union with Britain and into unity with the Republicof Ireland although that may be the case. The transition I am inter-ested in achieving is a transition that empties gender, sect and class ofdiscriminatory weight and significance; a transition that leads to afuture in which intersectional explanations of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Prot-estant’ are unnecessary. That may be a utopian transition I amimagining. So be it. Socialist and feminist imaginings have beenfuelled by utopian as well as dystopian imaginings albeit that ‘topias’as well as transitions need to be treated with critical caution.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Support from the Transitional Justice Institute (T.J.I.) of the Uni-versity of Ulster enabled the research that led to this article as well asmentor support from Professor Joanne Conaghan. I am grateful forher incisive feedback. Thanks also to Professor Fionnuala Nı Aolain,director T.J.I., and to F.L.S. readers, for critical comment, and toHilary Bell for editorial guidance.

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