Abstract
Donahoe introduces women’s community development in Northern Ireland as “wee women’s work,” a gendered space of public activity in which women’s capacity building and everyday care work contributes to slow peace in a subtle, dispersed, and incremental way. Wee women’s work does not threaten the status quo of this divided society by engaging in big “P” political activity. Instead, it focuses on “bread and butter” issues, what is often referred to as small “p” politics. This kind of public activity allows women to navigate the constraints of post-conflict, post Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland by seeking change without challenge. This chapter concludes with a plan of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
The “Troubles” is the term commonly used to described the political violence that shrouded Northern Ireland from the late 1960s until the signing of the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement in 1998. A brief history of the Troubles can be found in Chapter 3, heading “Troubles: The Gendered Past.”
- 2.
The terms Catholic and Protestant used here are reductive and problematic. They are used here as placeholders. I will address this directly in Chapter 2 under the subheading “Using the Language of Identity.”
- 3.
- 4.
UNSCR 1888 is a mandate to “peacekeeping missions to protect women, girls from sexual violence in armed conflict” (UNSC 2009).
- 5.
On December 3, 2012, Belfast City Council made a decision to limit the days that the Union flag will be flown over Belfast City Hall. The decision set off several weeks of rioting by Loyalists who argue that as a member of the United Kingdom, the Union flag ought to be flown above City Hall permanently. See for example BBC (2013).
- 6.
Nomenclature regarding Derry/Londonderry is divisive in Northern Ireland. As a visitor to the area, it is acceptable to use the two titles interchangeably as foreigners are not expected to know any better. The assumption is of course that someone using the shorter version, Derry, is betraying nationalist or republican sympathies. Londonderry then references Unionist sympathies. This is certainly true of print media using one or the other. A local radio personality shortcuts the problem by jokingly referring to “Stroke City” referring to the “/” that is commonly used to divide the two words in print. This is received by residents of the city with mixed disapproval. The issue is slightly different in the city itself. Being overwhelmingly Catholic, the city is commonly referred to simply as Derry. People from the isolated Fountain PUL community are less comfortable with this. Those on the Waterside of the city, the right bank, seem perfectly comfortable calling the city Derry, regardless of their politics or religion. It is shorter and commonplace. People in Waterside have a tendency to be in a slightly higher socioeconomic class and be much more mixed Catholic/Protestant than across the river as well. One community worker joked, “We’d be going up to Derry and I’d be going to Derry and she’d be going to Londonderry [laughs].” For this project, Derry/Londonderry will be used to express the views of the author. Where one or the other name is used exclusively, it is representative of the specific individual or group under discussion.
- 7.
Margaret Ward (Director, Women’s Resource and Development Association), interview with author, August 10, 2012.
- 8.
Michele Baird (CEO, Women’s Information Northern Ireland), interview with author, October 4, 2012.
- 9.
Michele Baird (CEO, Women’s Information Northern Ireland), interview with author, October 4, 2012.
- 10.
Callie Persic (Urban Development Officer Belfast City Council), interview with author, September 6, 2012.
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Donahoe, A.E. (2017). Introduction. In: Peacebuilding through Women’s Community Development . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55194-4_1
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