Bodies as battlegrounds: the gendered paradox of female IRA members in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This article examines gendered dimensions of female paramilitaries during the Troubles in Northern Ireland to challenge dominant masculinist narratives that have historically marginalized women’s roles and experiences. Drawing on feminist geopolitics, we analyze how women in the IRA operated in a paradoxical space. They were simultaneously empowered as agents of violence and subjected to physical and coercive control, including embodied sexualized violence, by both paramilitary and state actors. Through a case study centered on an in-depth interview with a former female IRA member, supplemented by relevant secondary sources, this article demonstrates how femininity was both tactically weaponized and politically controlled. We argue that women’s bodies and movements constituted critical geopolitical sites that were often obscured by masculinist-dominated framings of violence against women as ‘interpersonal’ rather than explicitly political acts. By foregrounding women’s participation, surveillance, and embodied harm, this study contributes to feminist scholarship seeking to dismantle the ‘architecture of silence’ that continues to surround gendered experiences of political conflict and war.