Engendering Resistance: women and policing in Northern Ireland

This paper examines women's experiences of interrogation in Northern Ireland. In particular, it considers how women's responses to police interrogation can be understood in terms of resistance, and how women's political consciousness has been raised and refined in relation to this contact. Interviews with a wide range of political activists reveal the range of strategies used to disrupt police interrogation. The security forces' reliance on an explicitly gendered and sexualised mode of interrogation ensures that gender is a focal point in struggles over political identity and bodily integrity. The gendered nature of interrogation, and women's responses to it, has been one of the forces that has nurtured and defined women's political consciousness in relation to gender, sexuality and other issues.