Margaret Ward looks at three Irish nationalist women's organizations - the Ladies Land League, Inghinidhe na hEireann and Cumann na mBan - in her study of the contribution Irishwomen have made to the struggle for national independence. Although the three organizations were very different, a common theme emerges - that women have never been seen as an independent force in Irish political history. Mobilized in times of crisis, they have been consistently excluded from positions of influence. This remains true, despite minor concessions, of the Republican movement in the late 1980s.