{"id":371003,"date":"2026-03-29T07:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T07:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/371003\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T07:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T07:13:08","slug":"in-northern-ireland-the-armed-patriarchy-is-alive-well-and-terrorising-women-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/371003\/","title":{"rendered":"In Northern Ireland, the \u2018armed patriarchy\u2019 is alive, well and terrorising women \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly every newspaper had a version of the same front cover. Two young women, blonde hair, bright smiles and even brighter futures; at a glance you could almost mistake them for sisters. The real connection between them is much darker; Natalie McNally<\/a>, victim of a brutal murder in December 2022, whose murderer was finally brought to justice<\/a> on Monday, and Amy Doherty<\/a>, who was murdered the day before.<\/p>\n

Between Natalie McNally and Amy Doherty sit the names of 13 other women, and more if you count girls. One woman, Ellie Flanagan<\/a>, was added to this terrible litany earlier in the month.<\/p>\n

Outside the courtroom, McNally\u2019s brother Declan spoke to the media and called violence against women and girls the \u201cshame of our society\u201d, and he is correct. Northern Ireland<\/a> has a mammoth problem. For our small population, we are outstripping other jurisdictions in one area over all others \u2013 the murder of women. Looking at the map which Women\u2019s Aid<\/a> maintains, which uses a dot to represent every woman murdered on the island, the eye is immediately drawn to the northeast. What on earth is going on up there? It\u2019s difficult to know where to start. <\/p>\n

The North is haunted by its ever-present past \u2013 the long shadow of the conflict means that a form of violence which was characterised until recently as merely \u201cdomestic\u201d did not get the attention it deserved. This has created a situation where some are primed to dismiss the range of behaviours that we call violence against women and girls as simply not that big a deal by comparison. The conflict also remains a drain on the financial resources of the state; legacy costs millions to police and administer. Meanwhile, Westminster is steadfast in its refusal to recognise the differences here, or to contribute to our work on what they recognise as a \u201cnational emergency\u201d. And, of course, there\u2019s the shadow of the gunman that lurks close by; paramilitaries continue to operate, an incubus in the most deprived communities anywhere on these islands. The \u201carmed patriarchy\u201d is alive and well, decommissioning or not.<\/p>\n

Another underappreciated factor is the state\u2019s financial position. There are nowhere near enough social homes to cope with need, so often when someone is considering leaving an abusive home, the best we can offer them is inappropriate and temporary accommodation hours away from their support network or their children\u2019s school \u2013 so they stay. Suffering with mental or physical impacts from abuse? Join a long waiting list. Willing to face your abuser down in court? We have a waiting list for that, too. <\/p>\n

The lack of political consistency also cannot be overstated. Almost half of the time since the Belfast Agreement, the Assembly<\/a> has simply not been operational. The stop-start nature of government causes endless delays; coercive control legislation had to be restarted from the beginning after the 2017-2020 collapse, for example. The provision to allow 10 days of paid leave for domestic abuse survivors \u2013 a piece of legislation so innovative and influential that other jurisdictions have since implemented their own version \u2013 remains in limbo a full four years after it passed in the Assembly. <\/p>\n

Speaking from the bitter personal experience of working in the women\u2019s movement, we have had to drag our politicians, kicking and screaming the whole way, to a place where they acknowledge that violence against women and girls is something which even merits a strategic approach. People who should know better, and who now share responsibility for making the strategy work, argued with their full chests that it was not needed, that it would somehow harm or diminish men. When they finally agreed, it still took years to implement, beginning work only in January 2025, a full 15 years after the first strategy in England and Wales. <\/p>\n

Almost immediately, however, the politicians who could not see the need for the work a few short years ago are bemused and bewildered. We invested in this work, they cry; why has it not eradicated the problem? <\/p>\n

Why, indeed? I have a few ideas. Among them is the reality that, despite legislation from Westminster mandating comprehensive relationships and sexuality education in schools, it remains a postcode lottery. Meanwhile, as prevention work began, a different department cut funding to Women\u2019s Aid for its shelter provision. The attitudinal change needed is not led from the top; after an MLA was reprimanded for the dismissive and misogynistic attitude he displayed to a committee chair, the discussion focused on free speech and the importance of \u201crobust challenge\u201d. Then, his party \u2013 the TUV<\/a> \u2013 printed the words that he said on pens to distribute at their conference. That was last weekend. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Judges adopt heavier sentence guideline for many domestic violence offencesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

They keep letting the focus wander. When the far right sought to co-opt the issue of violence against women in their racist pogroms just last year, some of our politicians wanted to examine their \u201creasonable concerns\u201d. And underlying it all is persistent underinvestment; after naming violence against women and girls as a priority issue in the first Programme for Government they managed to cobble together since 2011, the financial allocation to it in the current draft budget is at the bottom of the pile, trailing the others by a wide margin. <\/p>\n

If I was less angry about all of this, I might simply repeat the truth I\u2019ve said all week; this needs careful, preventive work and it will take time to come to fruition. But sometimes, and this is one of those times, it feels like bailing out a sinking ocean liner with a paper cup, while onlookers shout unhelpful advice from a safe distance. <\/p>\n

The depth of the problem is unfathomable, and until we grasp it fully and address the contributing factors and various barriers, we will never succeed. If our politicians demand sweeping societal change, they need to show up with generational funding and their sleeves rolled up, not just honeyed words and expressions of concern. <\/p>\n

Elaine Crory is the women\u2019s sector lobbyist at the Women\u2019s Resource & Development Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly every newspaper had a version of the same front cover. Two young women, blonde hair, bright smiles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[165732,156781,61,60,142909,43],"class_list":["post-371003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-amy-doherty","tag-ellie-flanagan","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-natalie-mcnally","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}