Suffrage ‘For Men and Women Equally’: The Irish Women’s Franchise League, <i>The Irish Citizen</i>, through Anderson’s Map, Census and Museum

<p dir="ltr">Irish women fought for the right to vote during the early 20th century, a time of great social and political upheaval in Ireland. Other cotemporaneous events include the Easter Rising, the Irish Civil War, the partitioning of Ireland, and the First World War. In the midst of these events, the fight for Irishwomen’s enfranchisement was frequently overshadowed by Irish nationalist discourse.</p><p dir="ltr">The Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL) was one organisation that fought for female suffrage. It utilised various methods in the fight for votes for women, including the publication of the newspaper <i>The Irish Citizen </i>(1912-1920) to articulate its demands, engage in political arguments, and converse within an imagined community of feminists and readers, nationally and internationally. Through <i>The Irish Citizen</i>, Irishwomen were able to assert themselves into the masculine political domain of Ireland, challenging nationalist discourses.</p><p dir="ltr">This thesis explores how Irish women and their suffragist supporters challenged the masculine political and nationalist discourses that excluded women in Ireland. This analysis utilises Benedict Anderson’s notions of Census, Map, and Museum to explain how Irish women used <i>The Irish Citizen </i>to problematise and disrupt nationalist discourse, and legitimate their demand for enfranchisement. Each frame reveals a different aspect of Irishwomen’s political engagement. Through the frame of census writers of the <i>Citizen </i>pushed and broadened the boundaries of the categorisations of ‘mother’ and ‘woman’, contesting the resilient narratives extant in political history. <i>Citizen </i>writers used map-as-logo to create space to explore the territory Irishwomen occupied on a national, imperial and global level. The frame of museum shows how <i>Citizen </i>writers politicised the past to interrupt and dispute contemporary political arguments. Irishwomen received limited enfranchisement in 1918, and full enfranchisement in 1922, though ultimately the demands of the Irish Free State, eventually Republic of Ireland, and Catholicism meant Irishwomen lost much of the progress they had made during the Irish Revolutionary Period.</p><p dir="ltr">This thesis shows that Anderson notions of census, map and museum provide germane frames with which to complete discourse analysis beyond interpreting the effectiveness of nationalism. Particularly for studying the process of enfranchisement within other countries.</p>