A Transient Transition: The Cultural and Institutional Obstacles Impeding the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition in its Progression from Informal to Formal Politics

Abstract

Women have traditionally occupied a perilous position in Northern Irish politics, ultimately constrained from participating on their own terms by its dominant discourses of nationalism, conflict and realism. Alienated from the formal political structures which enshrine these discourses, many women have alternatively embraced the informal political sphere in the form of extra‐institutional grassroots and community networks which constitute the women’s movement. Though this movement has largely conformed to the segmented structure of society, space has continually been harnessed for women of both national communities to converge on various issues and work across differences while remaining rooted within their own distinct national identities and communities. To the extent that it has episodically emerged, this style of transversal politics has been confined to collectives of the informal arena of politics. However, with the dawn of devolution and a new constitution for Northern Ireland women recognised the momentous opportunity to embark upon the formal sphere and partake in the shaping of a new society and political system. In the form of a transversal political party, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition affected this transition to the ‘parallel universe’ of constitutional politics. However just as political opportunity structure underlies the seizure of this political space, political obstacles can account for its loss. The combined factors of inimical discourses, their institutionalisation within the consociational system and the adverse political climate of polarisation effectively denied the NIWC the space it required to progress and endure within formal politics, rendering its transition a transient phenomenon.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Fiona Mackay for her valuable academic advice and support. The author would also like to sincerely thank Prof. Rick Wilford, Bronagh Hinds, Ann Hope, Dr. Margaret Ward, Patricia Wallace, Prof. Elizabeth Meehan and Pearl Sagar for some very useful interviews and the University of Edinburgh Development Trust for providing a grant to assist with the research conducted for this article.