(1) In the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement the British and Irish governments agreed that the territorial integrity of each sovereign state would be subject to the democratic mandate of citizens voting in Northern Ireland. A majority voting for a unitary Irish state would thereby alter the territory of each sovereign state. See Campbell, Ní Aoláin and Harvey 2003.

(2) The equality strand is given effect in the Northern Ireland Act 1998, s 75 of which requires public authorities in carrying out their duties in Northern Ireland to: pay due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity between persons of different religious belief; political opinion; racial group; age; marital status; or sexual orientation; between men and women generally; between persons with a disability and those without; and between persons with dependants and persons without.

(3) See Lauret 2000, where the term ‘legitimizing discourses’ refers to political appropriations of ‘black identity’ as positive acts of self-assertion.

(4) Hegemony here is meant in the Gramscian sense referring to the maintenance of and consent to class inequalities in democratic society. See Connell 1995, cited by Thomson 2006.

(5) For a survey of feminist work on Northern Ireland, see Rooney, 1995; Crilly, Gordon and Rooney, 2002; Hill, 2003. Notable feminist studies include Aretxaga, 1997; see also Roulston and Davies, eds, 2000, and Cockburn, 1998; and two unpublished dissertations, Moore 1993, and Alison 2003.

(6) See Rooney 2002 for discussion of the 1998 Vital Voices women’s conference on democracy attended by Hilary Clinton in Belfast. In the context of building consensus for the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, the contentious issue of local democracy was not discussed.

(7) This citation adapts Honig’s analysis of Arendt on the everywhereness of ‘politics’.

(8) The literature is vast. For a sample visit: ARK Northern Ireland Social & Political Archive http://www.ark.ac.uk/; CAIN http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/organ/docs/crcpubs.htm; Northern Ireland Community Relations Council http://www.community-relations.org.uk/services/publications/.

(9) On disjunction between state rhetoric in the management of conflict discourse and ‘actual practices of conflict management’ through, for instance, the uses of force and legal processes, see Ní Aoláin 2000, p 16.

(10) Deane’s essay was published with a range of academic views on the 1916 Irish rising to mark its 75th anniversary in 1991. The editors, and others, had originally hoped to organize a conference in Dublin on this founding event in modern Irish history. Official support was not forthcoming, and given that ‘general discussion had been curiously muted, not to say inhibited’, the writers settled for a publication, in the belief, ‘that, as a reaction, amnesia – private or communal – is both unhealthy and dangerous,’ see Ní Dhonnchadha and Dorgan, eds, 1991, p ix. Hanafin (2003, p 8) also notes the amnesia in Irish society around the state’s foundation in violence. However, he reports a strategic, post-conflict revival in elite claims to this historical inheritance.

(11) The 350–400 women’s groups that comprise the ‘women’s sector’ have attracted international feminist attention and admiration, see McMinn 2000. For the argument that the women’s groups are viewed as a form of civic feminism overlapping with but distinguished from republican or unionist feminism in that no formal position is taken on the constitutional question of state formation and citizenship in Northern Ireland, see Rooney 2000, and Aretxaga 1997.

(12) The Global Sisterhood Network is at: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~globalsn/. See Bottomley 2004 for analysis of the theoretical and practical problems posed by a unitary ‘figure of woman’ that emerges for stout defence in feminist jurisprudence.

(13) For a critique of race-free feminist theory and the argument that this provides evidence of ‘feminist racism’ in the US, see Newman 1999, cited by Ware 2000.

(14) For instance, the ‘women’s sector’ is treated as non-political in a community relations discourse where ‘politics’ is generally construed as a disdained sectarian and essentially male activity, see Rooney 2002. The NIWC was represented as being beyond sectarian division whilst the party itself envisioned a society freed from such divisions, see Fearon and McWilliams 2000.

(15) There is no comprehensive study of women’s poverty available in Northern Ireland; for a local analysis of women’s poverty in the poorest constituency of West Belfast, see Rooney 2004; for a related critique of the Northern Ireland Equality Commission’s failure to cite religious belief and political opinion (s 75 grounds) in its submission to the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, see Rooney 2006.

(16) Efforts have been made to engage with feminist theorists but there is no local debate. See Rooney 2003.

(17) For a range of feminist perspectives on this, see Lorentzen and Turpin, eds, 1998. For a critical a review of this text, see Rooney 1999.

(18) For discussion on how constructions of nationhood involve ‘specific notions of both “manhood” and “womanhood”’ within which women are subordinate, see Cockburn 1998; she also suggests that ‘if you see home as a “golden cage” you might suspect that homeland too has its contradictions’ (p 44).

(19) Recently reported indices of deprivation, that comparatively ranks electoral wards, indicate that the situation is worsening. Between 2001 and 2005, 12 of the 17 West Belfast wards, referred to earlier, increased their rank of deprivation. A leading human rights non-governmental organization, the CAJ, finds that ‘Northern Ireland is one of the most unequal societies in the developed world, and the inequality is increasing’. See CAJ 2006b, p 6.

(20) This policy was intended to target those people objectively shown to be in greatest need but originally it had no funding stream and was ineffective. See McCormack and McCormack 1995. It has recently been replaced by a new anti-poverty strategy entitled, ‘Lifetime Opportunities’ available at: http://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/antipovertyandsocialinclusion.pdf. For an important critique of this policy, see CAJ 2006c. Research remains outstanding on women’s poverty.