This chapter offers a quantitative analysis of female litigants in courts across three jurisdictions during the seventeenth century. Though the percentage of female litigants in common law courts remained low, an increasing number of women sought legal redress under equity law in England. In those colonies that established courts of chancery based on the English model, such as the Chesapeake Bay colonies and South Carolina, women also had the benefit of an equity jurisdiction that recognised exceptions to the doctrine of coverture. This chapter also presents remarkable evidence that women appeared as plaintiffs and defendants in more than half of the cases heard before the English ecclesiastical law courts, a percentage that far outstrips women’s participation in any court in the colonies.

The Belfast Agreement requires Ireland to provide an equivalent level of protection for human rights as applies in Northern Ireland, a requirement which would appear to cover the right to equality and non-discrimination. The lack of serious engagement with the North-South dimension is particularly notable given that the Belfast Agreement requires Ireland to provide an equivalent level of protection for human rights. The Belfast Agreement can be said to be explicitly founded upon a set of foundational general principles. Considerable emphasis is placed on the importance of equality as a key animating principle in the text of the Agreement. This reflects the reality that the history of segregation and discrimination in Northern Ireland means that any successful peace process will inevitably have to engage with the lack of equality that has and continues to burden the province.

This chapter defines women’s legal status in a variety of legal jurisdictions across the Anglo-American world, and examines how colonists adopted and modified English law in the earliest decades of colonisation. It argues that the complexity of the English legal system gave English women a decisive advantage over some of their colonial counterparts. While married women were limited in common law courts by the doctrine of coverture, other legal jurisdictions provided women with alternative avenues for legal redress when defending their property and persons. The two most important jurisdictions for women in England were equity law and ecclesiastical law, which both provided some remedy for the common law’s severity toward women.

In focusing on markets and commerce, this chapter discusses the complex cross-border institutions designed to encourage crossborder economic activity, and the cross-border flows of economic actors in their roles as tourists, commuters and students. It is concerned with the impact of devolution on everyday life through the prism of cross-border commerce. The story of cross-border economic cooperation is linked to the creation of North-South implementation bodies in 1999 under Strand Two of the Good Friday Agreement. The chapter shows how cross-border linkages and flows, with a consequent impact on everyday experience, have increased since 1999. One area where there is a strong impression of a cross-border market or commercial life working to its optimal level is that of shopping. Crossborder shopping is an issue that periodically (and temporarily) becomes a favourite topic for media interest and political oratory.

This chapter focuses on gender as an analytical identity category in the context of a changing, yet still deeply unequal, Northern Ireland. Unlike ethno-national identity, and to a lesser extent class, many women expressed a sense of their gender difference as something that was always there, omnipresent from their earliest childhood memories, that the sense of difference was innate. Several women talked at length about gender inequality in Northern Ireland as an observable social reality. A more promising analysis of gender inequality was offered by a much smaller number of women who recognised not only the extent to which such inequality impinges on their lives but also the potential to challenge and change it. Champions of equality were excited by the signing of the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998 due to the specific inclusions with regard to human rights and equal opportunities.

This chapter tracks community relations initiatives in education over the last three decades and considers the potential for school-based encounters to deliver peace-building objectives. The chapter provides an overview of the contact theory. The policy imperative for school-based contact dates back to the early 1980s, when the Northern Ireland Department of Education made the first public statement of commitment to the development of a community relations policy. In 2007, against the backdrop of a statutory community relations programme with limited impact, two international philanthropic organisations (International Fund for Ireland and Atlantic Philanthropies) offered funding for the large-scale Sharing Education Programme (SEP) in Northern Ireland. Although SEP is still in relatively early stages of delivery, a body of evidence is beginning to accumulate that is consistent in finding that the model offers an effective means of promoting good relations.

This chapter examines the challenges facing women who want to participate in politics in Northern Ireland and touches upon the relationship between women inside and outside politics. It draws upon survey research to show changes in public attitudes and discusses outreach programmes that support women who wish to become involved. The chapter traces the post-Good Friday Agreement (GFA) journey for women through the political institutions and demonstrates that while some progress has been made, more is required. The Northern Ireland Local Government Association, supported by Arlene Foster MLA (then Environment Minister), introduced an annual networking dinner in Parliament Buildings for women politicians. The election to the first Northern Ireland Assembly followed within months of the GFA. In assessing the gender deficit, female MLAs in the 1998 Assembly cited male culture and attitudes as obstacles to their participation.

The passing of legislation was of great importance to both government and community in early modern Ireland. It frequently was the mechanism by which grievances were addressed and also how finance was secured. This chapter considers the relevance of legislation and also the relevance of Poynings’ Law to the passage of legislation in Ireland. It also considers the relative importance of the creation of statute law in the Irish legal system. This chapter takes the reader through the various stages of legislation in the Irish Parliament, an area that has been relatively ignored when compared with the focus of studies on Poynings’ Law.