Snapshot on Identity: Women's contributions addressing community relations in a rural Northern Irish district

Abstract

Synopsis In this article, I examine the efforts of The Moyle Women's Forum, a community-based, voluntary women's organization in Northern Ireland, to undertake a photo-voice project. The project, titled Snapshot on Identity, is intended to contribute to their rural community by challenging cross-community relations between, and gendered ideologies associated with, Protestant and Catholic women. Feminist scholars have long demonstrated that unpaid work done mostly by women in households is productive and makes economic and social contributions. This scholarly literature has tended to concentrate on analyses of states, markets and households and overlooks women's contributions to their communities. Using the concept of social profitability, I argue that women's efforts, through the cross-community Snapshot on Identity project, developed personal skills, enriched the social environment and enhanced civic participation in their rural district. Drawing on semi-structured interview data with women, I illustrate how this project shaped their perceptions about the ability to change community relations and offered optimism about community relations in the rural district of Moyle in the future. Using this example from Northern Ireland, I demonstrate that while social profitability is a useful concept for recognizing the full extent of women's unpaid contributions in communities, it must be considered in ways that account for the specificity of social, historical and political contexts.