Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations - Transitional ...

3. THE GOOD FRIDAY AGREEMENT
In 1996 elections were held to the newly-constituted Northern Ireland Forum for Political
Dialogue to determine who would participate in political negotiations. A novel electoral
mechanism was employed to ensure the presence of smaller parties at the table, especially
the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party. 17 This political space,
created essentially to facilitate male actors in the sectarian conflict and without any gender
design in mind, was taken by women in order to get to the negotiating table. A crosscommunity
party, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, won two of the 110 Forum
seats, which allowed them a place at the negotiations. 18 The Coalition’s position was that
the Agreement should be underscored by principles of inclusion, equality and human
rights; it should go beyond the narrow confines of the two traditions and broaden and
deepen democracy within Northern Ireland. 19
3.1 The Good Friday Agreement Text: Gender Overview
The opening statement of the Good Friday Agreement declares:
We, the participants in the multi-party negotiations, believe that the agreement we have negotiated
offers a truly historic opportunity for a new beginning.
How inclusive was this opportunity or did it offer a new beginning for men hitherto on the
margins to come in and share power without sufficiently taking women into account? If
there were gender aspects, were they aspirational without putting in place mechanisms for
ensuring women’s participation? Was the commitment to ‘partnership, equality and mutual
respect as the basis of relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South
and between these islands’ a commitment based purely on the political relationships
between the various communities without any real examination of the level of equality and
respect within those communities? Concerned as it was about the power relationship between
communities how concerned was the Agreement with the power relationship within
communities, such as the power relationship between men and women? The Agreement
was negotiated behind closed doors by a largely male political elite, addressing major
constitutional questions. This was very far removed from the politics of home and
community in which women predominate, and raises a number of important questions:
was the Agreement designed to deal solely/chiefly with politics with a capital P rather than
politics with a small p, the latter often of more immediate interest to women because of
their absence or under-representation in the larger arena? Was the Agreement an
opportunity to ensure women a central place in the new political structure? Did it attempt
to do this and fail, or was women’s participation not regarded as an important issue? Is it
expecting too much of an Agreement such as this to address seriously gender inequality or
should it be de rigueur in peace agreements? This was a cross-community document
detailing the future relationship between Unionist and Nationalist; citizens from Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; Irish citizens and British citizens. Was it assumed that
the interests of men and women, from whichever community, coincided entirely? If so,
was this a valid assumption? While the language of the Agreement refers to the totality of
relationships, what it has in mind is very specific political relationships.
17 Bell, C. (1998) Women Equality and Political Participation in, DIS/AGREEING IRELAND: CONTEXTS,
OBSTACLES, HOPES (eds. James Anderson & James Goodman) Pluto Press, London
18 Women won only 15 seats in total and were markedly absent from the negotiating teams of the other
political parties.
19 Fearon, K. (1999) WOMEN’S WORK: THE STORY OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND WOMEN’S COALITION,
Blackstaff Press, Belfast
6