Hannah Sheehy Skeffington: "[The proposed Irish Constitution was based on] a Fascist Model, in which women would be relegated to permanent inferiority, their avocations and choice of callings limited because of an implied invalidism as the weaker sex.” (1937)

"Under the 1916 Proclamation, Irishwomen were given equal citizenship,
equal rights and equal opportunities. Subsequent constitutions have
filched these or smothered them in mere ‘empty formulae’..." (Electoral Address, 1943)

“I would ask you to delete these clauses because they are a betrayal of what was regarded by all loyal Irishwomen as a charter of their freedom.” - Prof. Kate O’Callaghan to de Valera re: Article 45.4.2 &c. (1937)

Kate (née Murphy) was a lecturer at @MICLimerick. Her husband, Michael O'Callaghan (a former Mayor of Limerick) was assassinated at their home during the war of independence. Kate, who struggled with the killers, was shot through the arm.

"Mr de Valera has always been a reactionary where women are concerned. He dislikes and distrusts us as a sex and his aim ever since he came into office has been to put us into what he considers is our place and keep us there." - Gertrude Gaffney (1937)

"The feminists are getting angry and are moving into action. They seem stung by the suggestion that the normal place for a woman is the home. I shall shortly have another note to meet these persons. Their thoughts are very confused." - Fr John Charles McQuaid to de Valera (1937)

For more see Maria Luddy's A 'Sinister and Retrogressive' Proposal: Irish Women's Opposition to the 1937 Draft Constitution (Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 175-195)

Thomas Mohr: "The Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1935 provided that the citizenship of children born outside the State could only be transmitted through the father. In 1935 De Valera believed that equal treatment in this area would lead to “confusion”.

Senator Jennie Wyse Power: "These young girls kept constantly assuring me: ‘When our own men are in power, we shall have equal rights’. They believed that. It may have been due to their lack of experience, but it was part of their faith. I do not know how they feel now.” (1935)

"Within ten years of the Free State’s existence, the guarantee of women’s equal status in Irish society had been eroded." - Caitriona Beaumont (1997) Women, citizenship and Catholicism in the Irish Free state, 1922-1948, Women's History Review

Dr Kathleen Lynn: “the Irish Catholic [newspaper] says [the] constitution is a noble document! That damns it if nothing else.”

Lynn was a doctor, suffragist, activist and Sinn Fein politician. She was the Chief Medical Officer of the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 Rising.

“Mrs Kettle says she works night and day with protest against new constitution’s rules for women, of course they are reactionary...Dev [de Valera] much pained we should not think his constitution perfect for women when there is so much discrimination in many sections.”

“What could be expected from man made laws, however, he said he approved of equal pay for equal work, wonderful he doesn’t apply it. Women will fight.” (1937)

"The reality of women’s participation in the political and public life of the Irish Free State was soon undermined by the legislative, cultural and social ideals of 'respectability and domesticity’ for women." - @MaryMcAuliffe4 https://goo.gl/K8hWos 

"[if only] Mr [James] Connolly were living, [Irish] women would not be in the backward position we are in today” - Rosie Hackett (1970)

Hackett was in the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 Rising, a founding member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union and a trade union activist.

"We were as keen as men on the freedom of Ireland, but we saw the men clamouring for amendments which suited their own interests and made no recognition of the existence of women as fellow-citizens." - Margaret Cousins (co-founder of the IWFL) re: the "inadequate" IPP.

Relevant thread https://twitter.com/Limerick1914/status/837629684389195777

FYI for my non-Irish followers: Éamon Ó Cuív is de Valera's grandson. The politics of the Magdalene Laundries, the Mother and Baby Homes and the "architecture of containment" lives on. https://twitter.com/fotoole/status/999414635928354816

"[The] coordinated move to criminalise abortion and effectively regulate women’s autonomy cannot be divorced from notions of the idealised version of Irish women (as articulated by the 1937 Constitution)" - Dr. Laura Harris (Abortion Rights in Quebec and Ireland: Divergent Paths)

In 1960 the Medical Officer of London reported that of the 1,259 unmarried mothers seeking help in London, 734 were Irish.

In 2016 Irish women accounted for almost 85% of the non-resident abortions carried out in England and Wales (15% of which were from Northern Ireland)

End of thread. https://twitter.com/MargaretWard1/status/999651005120811009

P.S. The masthead of The Irish Citizen, the newspaper of the Irish Women's Franchise League. It was founded in 1912 "to further the cause of Woman Suffrage and Feminism in Ireland" (Hannah Sheehy Skeffington)