Cumann na mBan: the Irish women's council, 1914–1923

Published 3 November 2026

Cumann na mBan (the Irishwomen's Council) was the women's organisation of the Irish revolutionary movement. Founded in Dublin in April 1914, it took part in the Easter Rising, sustained the IRA through the War of Independence and split bitterly over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Its members' own records, many of them released only in the 2000s and 2010s, have transformed what historians know about women in the Irish revolution.

Foundation in 1914

The organisation was launched at a meeting in Wynn's Hotel, Dublin, on 2 April 1914, a few months after the formation of the Irish Volunteers. The academic Agnes O'Farrelly presided, and early leading members included Jennie Wyse Power, Louise Gavan Duffy and, in Cork, Mary MacSwiney. Its stated aims were to advance the cause of Irish liberty, to organise Irishwomen in furtherance of that object, and to assist in arming and equipping a body of Irishmen for the defence of Ireland.

From the start this raised a question that divided feminists of the time. Suffragists such as Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington criticised Cumann na mBan for accepting an auxiliary role to a men's organisation that gave women no say in its decisions (see the Irish suffrage movement). Members answered that national independence came first and that women's place in it would be won through participation.

The Volunteer split and Inghinidhe na hÉireann

When the Irish Volunteers split in September 1914 over John Redmond's call for Volunteers to serve in the British army, Cumann na mBan sided with the minority that rejected his position. The organisation grew more radical in the following months. In 1915 Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland), the women's nationalist group founded by Maud Gonne in 1900, joined Cumann na mBan as a branch, bringing experienced activists and a tradition of open republicanism.

Branches drilled, held first-aid and signalling classes, raised funds for arms and organised concerts and céilís. Women in the Irish Citizen Army, the workers' militia linked to James Connolly, trained separately and on more equal terms with the men.

Easter 1916

During the Rising, Cumann na mBan members served with most of the Dublin garrisons, including the GPO, the Four Courts and Marrowbone Lane, carrying dispatches and ammunition, running kitchens and treating the wounded. At Boland's Mill, Éamon de Valera declined to admit women. Elizabeth O'Farrell and Julia Grenan were among the last to leave the GPO with the headquarters staff, and O'Farrell carried the surrender order to other garrisons (see Elizabeth O'Farrell and women in the 1916 Rising).

After the surrender, members organised support for prisoners' families through bodies such as the Irish National Aid and Volunteers' Dependants' Fund, work that kept the movement alive while most male leaders were interned.

Growth and the War of Independence

At its 1917 convention Constance Markievicz, then the best-known woman in the movement, was elected president. Membership grew rapidly through 1918, during the campaign against conscription and the general election in December, when Cumann na mBan members canvassed for Sinn Féin.

During the War of Independence (1919–21) the organisation's work was essential and often dangerous. Members carried messages and weapons, gathered intelligence, kept safe houses, nursed wounded Volunteers and organised prisoner support. Because women were less likely to be searched, they could move material that men could not. The Military Service Pensions Collection (Military Archives) contains many applications describing this work in detail.

The Treaty split

Cumann na mBan was the first major body of the republican movement to reject the Anglo-Irish Treaty. At a convention in February 1922 delegates voted by a large majority against it. Pro-Treaty members left and formed a separate organisation, Cumann na Saoirse. During the Civil War that followed, Cumann na mBan supported the anti-Treaty IRA, and hundreds of its members were arrested and held in prisons including Kilmainham Gaol and the North Dublin Union, where many went on hunger strike in 1923.

The organisation survived the Civil War in a much reduced form and continued as part of the republican movement for decades, though it never regained its earlier size or influence.

Pensions and the records

The Military Service Pensions Act 1934 allowed members of Cumann na mBan to apply for pensions and service medals for the period 1916–23. Applicants had to set out their service, and branch officers compiled nominal rolls of members. These files, released in stages by the Military Archives, are now one of the richest sources for the history of Irish women in the revolutionary period. They show the scale of women's involvement across the country, not only in Dublin, and the difficulty many women had in getting their service recognised.

The Women's History Project, run under a committee of the Women's History Association of Ireland in the late 1990s, was part of the wider effort to survey and list sources of this kind.

Key dates

Sources and further reading

• Military Service Pensions Collection (Military Archives): Cumann na mBan nominal rolls and individual pension files.
• Dictionary of Irish Biography (Royal Irish Academy): entries on Agnes O'Farrelly, Jennie Wyse Power, Mary MacSwiney and Constance Markievicz.
• Cal McCarthy, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Revolution (Collins Press, 2007).
• Margaret Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (Pluto Press, 1983).
• Bureau of Military History witness statements (Military Archives).

More on Irish women's history

• Women in the 1916 Rising
• Constance Markievicz (1868–1927)
• The Irish suffrage movement: how Irish women won the vote
• Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (1877–1946)
• The marriage bar in Ireland
• Elizabeth O'Farrell and the surrender of 1916