Compensating Irish female revolutionaries, 1916-1923

The newly released Irish Military Service Pensions Collection offers the most comprehensive opportunity to examine the role of women in the Irish revolution (1916-1923) or in any comparable nationalist revolution. It is also an extremely useful source of evidence for an emerging historiographical trend of tracing the post-revolutionary lives of female veterans by examining the award of service pensions to them by that state. This article will examine the role played by gender in the award of such pensions, the economic and financial significance of them in a state that had under-developed welfare provision and the importance of them as a symbolic recognition of women’s roles in helping to achieve Irish independence. It also compares the post-conflict experience of Irish female revolutionary veterans with women who were involved in comparable international military conflicts.