Initial Meetings

In reaction to these events the Irish Volunteers were founded to oppose the Ulster Volunteer Force and support Home Rule. With the foundation of the Irish Volunteers many women felt that it would

be appropriate to go about founding an organisation that would unite women of Ireland in an independent body that would work in conjunction with the Volunteers, furthering their cause. Jennie Wyse Power later recalled the months following the foundation of the Volunteers:
“Many informal meetings took place to discuss the formation of a women’s society whose aim would be to work independently, and at the same time to organise Nationalist women to be of service to the Irish Volunteers. The Ulster Women’s Council was at this time working to assist the
Ulster Volunteers, and it was found that their method in the main was practical and worth considering”

These informal meetings led to the the inaugural public meeting of the Irish Women’s Council or Cumann na mBan .