women

A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere

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2014-05-06 North3Women+

“The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes. A women is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform. Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.” This past Saturday (2015-03-08) was International Women’s Day. The board above (on one of the Donegall Road bridges) features the Westinghouse ‘We Can Do It!’ poster (often mistaken for Rosie The Riveter) (WP) though here with a women’s liberation badge on her collar (shown in large size on the right). She is between images of women at work. See also: The Home Front.

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Mothering Sunday In Beechmount

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Mothering Sunday 2014 was yesterday, Sunday March 30th. On Saturday, when this image was taken, menfolk were out and about tracking down flowers and chocolates. This week also happens to be the one-hundredth anniversary (“céad blıaın”) of the founding of Cumann Na mBan on April 2nd, 1914, and it is being commemorated in various ways, including a new mural on Ascaıll Ard na bhFeá/Beechmount Avenue.

Cumann Na mBan was the women’s division of the Irish Volunteers and is best remembered for its role in the Easter Rising of 1916. Its members were involved in the occupation of many locations. Some, including (non-combatant) Winifred Carney, were in the GPO, while Countess Markievicz, the main figure of the mural, was in St. Stephen’s Green. (Here is an RTÉ gallery of vintage photographs, including one of Markievicz surrendering.)

The letters “Cnamb” on a rifle formed the badge of Cumann Na mBan. The Irish “Ní saoırse go saoırse na mban” means “No freedom until the freedom of women”. Below are an ‘in-progress’ shot from last week; and a close-up of the finished mural. Below these is a plain shot of the full mural.

Replaces the Fıanna Éıreann centenary, 1909-2009, in which Countess Markievicz was also featured.

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Naming Our Streets

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2014-02-04 WinifredCarneyRoad+

The Antrim Road at Carlisle Circus also bears the street-name ‘Winifred Carney Road’ (top left of the image above), as part of the ‘Naming Our Streets’ project. Carney’s name was chosen for this location – SIPTU offices – because she was a trade unionist and also because she grew up on Carlisle Circus. For more information, including biographies of 50 historically important Belfast women, seven of whom were honoured in this way, see the Women’s Resource & Development Agency.

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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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We Too Are Strong

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“We too are strong. We too are a threat to the oppressive enemy. We are revolutionaries. We are the other half of our revolutionary men. We are their equal halves.” Earth is contained within the symbol for woman. The IRA’s Maıréad Farrell is in the top left.

Next to Mac Brádaıgh in South Link, Andersonstown, west Belfast

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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Just As Good As Others

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RNU (Republican Network For Unity) mural at the top of Berwick Road (Paráıd An Ardghleanna) featuring the words of Maıréad Farrell, one of the PIRA members shot on Gibraltar.

“Everyone tells me I’m a feminist. All I know is that I’m just as good as others … and that especially means men. I am definitely a socialist and I am definitely a republican. I believe in a united socialist country, definitely socialist. Capitalism can offer our people nothing and yet that’s the main interest of the British in Ireland.”

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Battling On

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2013-06-04 IntlWomensDay13+

This board in the Bogside is for “International Women’s Day, 8th March 2013 – Battling On: From petrol bombs to yarn bombs.” The woman in the painting – in the style of Banksy’s Flower Thrower (also imitated in Bundoran Banksy) – seems to have a petrol bomb rather than a yarn bomb.

Here is the board for 2011 International Women’s Day, on the wall next to this one.

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Sister Soldiers

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2013-05-15 CummanNamBan+

Republican mural in Sráıd Na Sceıthe/Hawthorn Street at the junction with Cavendish Street celebrating the lives of Winifred Carney and Nora Connolly. “They stand for the honour of Ireland, As their sisters in days that are gone, And they’ll march with their brothers to freedom, The soldiers of Cumann Na mBan.” Below is a 1965 video of Connolly talking about her life (1893-1981 (WP)) and her father James Connolly, who was executed after the 1916 rising. Carney, who grew up and lived in Belfast, was inside the GPO with Connolly. After the rising, she returned to Belfast, married a Protestant, and continued to advocate socialism (WP).

Previously on Extramural Activity: 1916 Easter Rising Inside the GPO | Outside the GPO

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