The causes of nationalism and feminism attracted many Irish women during the first two decades of the twentieth century, though these activists often faced a choice as to whether the achievement of national freedom or the extension of the franchise in parliamentary elections to women should be given the higher priority. Many nationalists argued that it should be up to the Irish nation to decide the question of women's suffrage only after political autonomy had been achieved. But many feminists wondered, given the socially conservative context of Catholic Ireland, whether the enfranchisement of women would necessarily follow political independence. The tension between these two ideals forms the major theme that runs through Senia Pašeta's Irish Nationalist Women, 1900–1918, which is both a superb synthesis of previous scholarship on politically active Irish women and an original assessment, using archival sources, of the role of women during a formative period in Irish history.

The study begins with the establishment in 1900 of Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland), which Pašeta regards as “one of the most important political organisations founded in early twentieth-century Ireland” (33), because it acted as a catalyst for women's political involvement. It also remained explicitly dedicated to both nationalism and feminism, while most other organizations focused primarily on one or the other ideal. Inghinidhe was just one of a plethora of “advanced” nationalist groups during the period with overlapping memberships. All of them promoted the “Irish Ireland” ideal, which maintained that mere political autonomy would be meaningless without cultural and economic autonomy as well. In addition, many members of these groups advocated the complete separation of Ireland from Britain, as opposed to home rule within the United Kingdom as sought by the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), the country's dominant political organization. In actively promoting such causes as the revival of the Irish language, the establishment of an Irish national theater, the campaign to buy Irish products, and the anti-recruitment drive to discourage young Irish men from enlisting in the British army, women gained skills in public speaking, organizing, and polemical writing, and became increasingly experienced in playing active roles in public affairs.

While previous scholarship on women has tended to focus on their roles in advanced nationalist organizations, Pašeta's work offers comprehensive treatment of women in both “advanced” and constitutional nationalism. After treating the multifarious activities of Inghinidhe members, Pašeta turns to the involvement of women in the IPP and its constituency organization, the United Irish League. In particular, she treats the ladies' branches of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a predominantly religious organization that was informally allied with the IPP. Unlike the advanced nationalist groups, the Ancient Order of Hibernians was highly sectarian, with a strictly Catholic membership, and limited women to secondary roles. After long equivocating on the suffrage issue, John Redmond, the leader of the IPP, firmly upheld the priority of achieving home rule and declared himself opposed to women's suffrage on principle in 1912. Despite this, the number of women who remained supportive of the “old nationalism” was certainly much greater than those committed to the “new nationalism,” both before and after the achievement of the party's goal in 1912, when the House of Commons passed the Third Home Rule Bill. While the constitutional nationalist organizations and their allies discouraged female participation, Pašeta notes that many advanced nationalist organizations proved to be much more receptive. When Arthur Griffith led the creation in 1900 of an umbrella organization, Cumann na nGaedheal, which brought together various advanced nationalist groups, women's organizations were accepted on an equal basis with men's.

After treating the attraction of some women to socialism, social activism by women, including efforts to provide school lunches for impoverished children, and ongoing conflicts regarding whether to prioritize suffrage or national independence, Pašeta focuses in the last half of the book on Cumann na mBan (League for Irish Women). It was founded in 1914 as a women's auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers, which had, in turn, been established late in the previous year as a militia to enforce the implementation of home rule against any opposition by unionists. Initially, Cumann na mBan included women from both the separatist and constitutional traditions of nationalism, but when the Irish Volunteers split at the beginning of the First World War between those supportive of the British war effort and those who condemned the war as imperialist, the women's organization also split. Many politically active women remained affiliated with the separatist men's organization, which retained the name of Irish Volunteers, and participated in the Easter Rising in 1916. During this insurrection against British rule, women carried dispatches, prepared food for the men, and nursed the wounded. As Pašeta points out, even though the tasks performed by female volunteers fulfilled conventional gender roles, doing them during an armed rebellion was not conventional at all. Given the promise of gender equality contained in the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Cumann na mBan also became, as Pašeta concludes, more explicitly feminist after the Easter Rising.

The choice of 1918 as the end of the study reflects the transformation of both the national cause and the suffrage issue after the First World War. Partly due to their contribution to the war effort, women over 30 years of age who also met a minimal property requirement could participate in the parliamentary elections of December 1918. Pašeta argues that the IPP's denial of any major role to women contributed significantly to its decimation in this crucial election, in which it won only 6 of 105 Irish seats. After the suppression of the Easter Rising and execution of the rebel leaders, the achievement of home rule no longer seemed sufficient, and Irish voters, including for the first time significant numbers of women, turned to the separatist Sinn Féin, which eclipsed the long-dominant and male-dominated Irish Parliamentary Party. Pašeta's clearly written and well-organized study of politically engaged women elucidates the interplay between the ideals of nationalism and feminism during this seminal era of Irish history.