Constance Markievicz T-shirt

A founding member of Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Citizen Army, she took a leading part in the Easter Rising in 1916.  She was sentenced to death but her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. On 28 December 1918, she was the first woman elected to Westminister, though, being in Holloway Prison at the time and in accordance with party policy, she did not take her seat. Instead, she and the other Sinn Féin TDs formed the first Dáil Éireann. She was also one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position, as Minister for Labour, from 1919 to 1922.