Analysis | Women at the table: Why inclusive peace negotiations matter
How women’s political participation influenced the Good Friday Agreement negotiations in Northern Ireland — and what it means today
The politics of Northern Ireland can get lost amid the tumultuous recent succession of new prime ministers in the United Kingdom. But what happens in Northern Ireland has repercussions for the rest of the country, and currently it is locked in a political stalemate at Stormont — the devolved legislative seat — that looks as if it will necessitate new assembly elections, barely six months after the last. Elections held in May 2022 broke the record of women’s representation at Stormont, returning 35 percent women to the legislature. Michelle O’Neill became Northern Ireland’s first minister-designate, the second woman to hold the role after Arlene Foster. But none of the women newly elected to the assembly have been able to start work. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), now Northern Ireland’s second-largest party after Sinn Féin, has refused to join the executive over fundamental disagreements about the Northern Irish Protocol, a measure introduced as part of the U.K.-E.U. Withdrawal Agreement in an attempt to streamline cross-border trade after Brexit.
What would new elections mean for women’s political participation, and will the record percentage of women in office matter at this contentious juncture? A growing body of research on women and peace processes indicates that women’s participation does seem to matter in the aggregate. Higher levels of women’s representation legitimize decision-making processes and confer institutional trust, and are also linked with lower levels of human rights abuses by the state. In the context of post-conflict countries, political settlements that include women are more likely to be successfully concluded and implemented. But these findings come with important caveats. How women access peace talks, and where they come from, shapes how they engage. Northern Ireland’s own history holds examples of both the possibilities and the limits of how women’s presence can influence negotiations, peacebuilding, and governance. A closer look at the Good Friday Agreement, in which women played a critical role despite being a numerically small presence, offers valuable lessons.
Women’s participation in the peace talks: The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition
The Good Friday Agreement, ratified in 1998, largely ended conflict deaths after decades of war, and laid out a framework for shared governance that continues to undergird Northern Ireland’s political institutions. Women participated in the peace talks in a variety of capacities, as one ISD case study explains. From the governmental side, the U.K.’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland was Mo Mowlam, and Liz O’Donnell was a state representative of the Republic of Ireland. American Martha Pope served as deputy to Special Envoy George Mitchell, whom President Clinton appointed to mediate the negotiations. Among the Northern Irish parties, most had at least some women backbenchers, many of whom were well-respected politicians in their own rights — but in the day-to-day negotiations, the only women regularly around the table were the two representatives of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC).
Northern Ireland is a rare example in which women from civil society were able to achieve direct representation in formal peace negotiations, by creating their own political party — the NIWC. The parties determined participation in the peace talks by the results of the 1996 forum elections, and the NIWC leveraged a unique electoral system intended to open the negotiations to smaller Unionist parties that could act as spoilers. The electoral framework included a “top-up” list of the ten parties that received the most votes across Northern Ireland, opening participation beyond the five main political parties that tended to dominate individual constituencies.
Realizing most other parties had no intention of including women, a group of women civil society leaders convened to figure out how they could influence the talks. With only six weeks to the elections, and no funding, office space, or staff, they called a meeting of women in Belfast and decided to form their own party. To take advantage of the “top-up” list, the women ran as many candidates as they could across the country, promising a change from traditional partisanship, captured in their slogan “Wave goodbye to dinosaurs.”
The candidates typically had little political experience, and were often colleagues from the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, academia, advocacy, or service provision — a diversity that would help them later. The party was also intentionally cross-community, drawing on membership from nationalists, unionists, and everything in between. After an energetic grassroots campaign, they won 1.03 percent of the vote, guaranteeing them two seats around the table at Stormont.
Once there, the NIWC drew on its civil-society and cross-community roots to make a number of important contributions to both the conduct of the negotiations themselves and the content of the final agreement text. These roots gave the NIWC negotiators access to a wealth of knowledge and opinion; the diversity of its membership meant they could draw on contacts in different fields to inform position papers. It also meant they had to pre-negotiate contentious policies among themselves, as members often started “quite far apart” on issues. By using their three core principles — inclusion, equality, and human rights — as a yardstick, the NIWC developed detailed policy proposals, which sometimes were recycled into the final agreement text.
The NIWC’s commitment to inclusivity also meant they took on the role of honest broker in trying times. When parties on both sides were banned from the negotiations over ceasefire breaches, the women could act as an intermediary, maintaining lines of communication. They had gained legitimacy through elections and their diligent negotiating work, but the party’s small size also meant it was hardly a political threat. Nevertheless, the NIWC did have its own agenda, which it worked hard to insert into the final agreement.
Because the party did not take an official position on the central constitutional question — whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom or unite with the Republic of Ireland — the NIWC prioritized many “bread and butter” issues that impacted daily life, as well as longer-term investments in reconciliation. Among other contributions to the content of the agreement, the NIWC pushed to include mention of victims’ rights, integrated education, women’s political participation, and a new Civic Forum, through which civil society could continue to have a voice in Northern Irish politics. These propositions all addressed critical areas for moving forward out of conflict. Dealing with victims, excluded populations, young people, and maintaining an open and inclusive political environment are necessary for successful post-conflict recovery. The NIWC also advocated for more inclusive electoral law, and one of the biggest regrets of former members was the party’s failure to institute a permanent change to the electoral system to maintain the framework that had allowed them and other small parties access to the talks. Nonetheless, their contributions mattered. Reflecting on the negotiation process years later, mediator George Mitchell concluded the NIWC “played a hugely disproportionate role — disproportionate to their vote and to their numbers at the table — in the outcome.”
Lessons for the present
What lessons does the NIWC offer for the future of Northern Irish governance — still stymied by many of the same questions the Good Friday Agreement negotiations grappled with? Ultimately, the simple presence of women will not in itself lead to a more successful outcome — indeed the recent past has seen a range of women leaders elected and appointed in Northern Irish politics, including two British prime ministers, two secretaries of state for Northern Ireland, and first and deputy first ministers at Stormont, but little forward movement. But a broader range of women’s representation could bring new perspectives and a focus on a different set of issues.
The NIWC’s success shows greater inclusion of nontraditional voices and parties, especially from civil society, can sometimes help break gridlock, and bring fresh ideas to old debates. To reap the benefits of these ideas, negotiations require resources and political will. Most of the policies the NIWC inserted into the Good Friday Agreement have yet to be fully implemented. The Civic Forum was disbanded in 2002, more than 90 percent of schools remain segregated, and victims and their families still struggle for resources and justice. Many of the women recently elected to Stormont in May represent a new generation of politicians, like the NIWC, concerned with issues that touch their communities, from mental health resources and social exclusion to climate change. Perhaps they can help move the needle, but first the assembly needs to reopen for business.
Rebecca Turkington is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Cambridge, where her research focuses on transnational women’s organizing. She previously worked on gender, security, and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security, and has an M.A. from Georgetown’s Security Studies Program.
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Read additional analysis from The Diplomatic Pouch on the Northern Ireland peace process:
