Women in Ethnic Conflict: A Critical Ethnography of Female Combatants in the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Background and Purpose: Females represent 40 percent of fighters in ethnic, separatist, and guerilla struggles. Between 1990 and 2002, female soldiers were embedded with fighting forces as active combatants in 36 countries. Limited research exists on the experiences of combatant women in armed conflict. Existing research cites the underrepresentation of the experiences and voices of combatant women in political and peace-making discourses of post-conflict societies. By studying combatant women, social workers influence decisions international and state actors make regarding post-conflict policy, interventions targeted to ex-combatants, and the psychosocial recovery of communities. This paper addresses this gap through a critical ethnography conducted with female combatants in the Provisional IRA. The paper examines findings of female agency, voice, identity, resistance, and representation during violent political conflict and the resulting peace transformation to develop an exploratory, complex description of female combatants’ lived experiences through the framework of postcolonial theory.

Methods:  Fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with female Provisional IRA members. Twelve unstructured interviews were conducted with community and political representatives. Fieldwork occurred May- August 2013 in Belfast and Derry, Northern Ireland. Data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, field notes, observations, photographs, document review, and historical political data. Snowball sampling was used to recruit participants for this study. Interview topics included: (a) history of engagement in the conflict, (b) gender during and after the conflict; and (c) nationalism. Constant comparative coding was the primary method of analysis, utilizing a critical, postcolonial framework. Data was collected and analyzed simultaneously in the field. Coding was done by hand while simultaneously maintaining a memoing journal. A codebook was developed with tabs for a priori codes, preliminary and descriptive coding, secondary coding, themes and categories, and finally concepts.

Findings:  There were five ethnographic findings: a) family and community as galvanizing factors, b) colonial and gendered violence, c) resistance, d) gender within the republican movement, and e) identity, voice, and silencing. Data analysis revealed the women were socialized into the IRA via their fathers or brothers. Each woman reported experiences of violence, such as strip searching and assault, from the British state. Women reported gender equity within the Provisional IRA, but silencing and isolation from academic feminists, women’s groups funded by peace monies, and non-republican political parties. In political discourse, their male comrades are welcome; female combatants are not invited or are discouraged by non-republican groups. Community services are largely provided by the republican community.

Conclusion and Implications: Findings highlight the lack of female inclusion in post-conflict political discourse and argues a culturally contextual gendered analysis of conflict is necessary to building peace and post-conflict reconstruction. The results contributes to contextual understanding of female participation in armed conflict, which better enables the discipline of social work to challenge the hegemonic imbalance of women in politics and the status of women’s rights, while also giving voice to the voiceless and their experiences in war. Further research into women in conflict and post-conflict settings assists in building knowledge of good policy and practice among social workers practicing in complex, violent settings.