This year, commemorations are taking place on both sides of the Atlantic to mark the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. On April 24, 1916 — the day after Easter — some 1,600 Irish nationalists rose up against British rule and took over public buildings in Dublin. The rebels used the general post office as their headquarters, and resistance leader Patrick Pearse declared an Irish republic.
Pearse's proclamation began with an unusual recognition of equality as he called out to "Irishmen and Irishwomen."
"The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman," he later stated in the text. "The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens."
The rebels fought the British Army for six days, but eventually surrendered, outmanned and outgunned. For a long time, the details of that surrender were erased. A woman named Elizabeth O'Farrell came out with a white handkerchief and negotiated the end of the fighting — she went back to get Pearse, and the two of them surrendered together. But in the iconic photograph of that moment, O'Farrell's feet had disappeared, erased from contemporary accounts.
As Ireland and the world looks back at the Easter Rising with mixed feelings, the history of the women who participated in the Easter Rising is also being remembered. This is thanks to the research of people like Dr. Mary McAuliffe, a lecturer in Women's Studies at University College Dublin.
She says 1916 was not the beginning of political activism for the 300 women who participated in the Easter Rising. They were already radicalized by feminism, nationalism and their work in trade unions, and this was before women in Ireland had the right to vote.