One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back: Women’s Rights 20 Years after the Good Friday Agreement

Pierson, Claire

doi:10.1093/pa/gsx032

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…This reinforced strict limits on abortion services and meant that Irish women barely had access to it up until 2019. During that time, in particular after the UK parliament liberalised its abortion legislation with the Abortion Act 1967 , many travelled to England for the procedure, while lately more have obtained abortion pills online (Bloomer and O’Dowd 2014; Dahlqvist 2012; Pierson 2018; Rossiter 2009).…”

Section: Conservative Opposition: Rhetoricmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opposing abortion in a feminist paradise: Conservative rhetoric in Iceland

Sigvaldason

Ómarsdóttir

2022

Glob. Con.

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This article addresses the conservative opposition to Iceland’s recently liberalised abortion laws. It argues that the opposition belongs to a long and rich history of conservatives willing to employ diverse measures to oppose progress. It further claims that the rhetoric employed has strong roots in the conservative tradition. This is demonstrated by the fact that the discourse in Iceland fits within Hirschman’s analytical framework, through which he analyses the main arguments of conservatives in the past. Icelandic conservatives argued that the proposed legislation would lead to the perverse effect that healthy foetuses would be aborted, that the legislation was futile, as the system was already well-functioning, and that it would jeopardise women by giving them the sole responsibility of deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy. The article sheds light on the underlying resistance to women’s bodily autonomy and right to self-determination. It also illustrates the importance of hierarchy and conservatism’s opposition to equality that is perceived to be taken too far. In light of global trends, where conservatives have tried to implement policies that are hostile towards women and women’s interests, it is important to explore national contexts where legislative success has been achieved despite global backlash.

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Section: Conservative Opposition: Rhetoricmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opposing abortion in a feminist paradise: Conservative rhetoric in Iceland

Sigvaldason

Ómarsdóttir

2022

Glob. Con.

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“…Although this seems to dovetail with Meaney, when relating an articulation of women as ‘conveniently flawed boundary guards’ (Louise Ryan, cited in McCormick, 2009, p. 207)—who allegedly need policing by men as a result of their susceptibility to foreign influence—to the North, McCormick replaces fear of influence from abroad with fear of influence from across the sectarian divide . This is indicative of the tendency in NI of the ‘two communities frame’ to absorb and diminish concerns about anything but sectarian difference (see e.g., Crangle, 2018; Pierson, 2018). Even scholarship applying intersectionality theory to the NI context often deals with race only in a general way or specifically in relation to the United States (see e.g., Rooney, 2007).…”

Section: Race and Reproduction In Northern Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving Reproductive Justice: Some Implications of Race for Abortion Activism in Northern Ireland

Nyberg¹

2020

Feminist Review

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Over the course of the campaign to repeal the 8 th Amendment, Together for Yes received criticism for not engaging adequately with reproductive justice thinking and, particularly, with questions of race. For example, looking back at commentary about the Savita Halappanavar memorial from Emily Waszak of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities for Reproductive Justice (MERJ), Ruth Fletcher (2018, p. 241) notes 'the troubling way in which a brown woman's dead body became a site for repeal grief, when brown women's lives were not visibly front and centre' in the campaign.

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“…As shown in Table 2 the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement contains several references to women, although mostly set against the broader back-drop of human rights. There is, however, explicit reference to the 'right of women to full and equal political participation', which came about largely due to the concerted 6 efforts of the Women's Coalition, who formed around the time of the Agreement (Fearon, 1999;Murtagh, 2008;Pierson, 2017). Following the breakdown of the devolved institutions in 2004, the St. Andrew's Agreement of 2007 led to their re-establishment.…”

Section: Issues mentioning

confidence: 99%

Feminising politics, politicising feminism? Women in post-conflict Northern Irish politics

Thomson

2019

Br Polit

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2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and the establishment of devolved governance in Northern Ireland. Yet, whilst devolution has largely been held to have positive effects in Scotland and Wales with regards to both women's descriptive and substantive representation, this impact has been less discernible in Northern Ireland. Of the four regions of the United Kingdom, politics in Northern Ireland is arguably the most unfeminisedwomen have routinely seen lower descriptive representation in the Northern Irish Assembly and policy-making in areas such as reproductive rights lies far behind the rest of the UK. The article explores why politics is so unfeminised in the post-conflict context in Northern Ireland, by looking at efforts to feminise formal politics (especially the various peace/inter-party agreements and attempts to include women in formal politics) and efforts to politicise feminist activism (the work of the women's sector to influence policymaking in the province). It then explores some of the academic explanations as to why the feminisation of politics remains so difficult in Northern Ireland.

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One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back: Women’s Rights 20 Years after the Good Friday Agreement

Cited by 15 publications

References 31 publications

Opposing abortion in a feminist paradise: Conservative rhetoric in Iceland

Opposing abortion in a feminist paradise: Conservative rhetoric in Iceland

Achieving Reproductive Justice: Some Implications of Race for Abortion Activism in Northern Ireland

Feminising politics, politicising feminism? Women in post-conflict Northern Irish politics

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