Community Activism

Many of the women featured in this exhibition began their activism early on in their lives through involvement in trade unions and community work. It was one way to introduce much-needed change in their local communities and learn skills that would later prove vital in their peace work.

Being a trade unionist allowed some, like Eileen Weir, to ‘look at the issue and not the people’ at a time when division and sectarianism was the focus of many.

Community involvement worked in the same way, like in the 1980s when the residents of May Blood’s estate got together and decided to ‘leave the constitutional issues to the side’ when they realised that they all ‘faced the same uphill battle with the likes of poor housing and low education attainment.’

Women in these sectors were ‘working across the political divide.’