Nell McCafferty facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Nell McCafferty
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| Born | 28 March 1944 Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland |
| Died | 21 August 2024 (aged 80) Donegal County Donegal, Republic of Ireland |
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| Nationality | Irish |
| Alma mater | Queen's University Belfast |
Nell McCafferty (28 March 1944 – 21 August 2024) was an Irish journalist, playwright, civil rights campaigner and feminist. She wrote for The Irish Press, The Irish Times, Sunday Tribune, Hot Press and The Village Voice.
Early life
McCafferty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, to Hugh and Lily McCafferty, and spent her early years in the Bogside area of Londonderry. She was admitted to Queen's University Belfast (QUB), where she took a degree in Arts. After a brief spell as a substitute English teacher in Northern Ireland and a stint on a Kibbutz in Israel, she took up a post with The Irish Times newspaper.
Career
McCafferty was a founding member of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement. Her journalistic writing on women and women's rights reflected her beliefs on the status of women in Irish society. In 1970, she wrote that "Women's Liberation is finding it very hard to explain the difference, when you come down to it, except in terms of physical make-up. And men are as different as women, which no-one holds against them. It's the system which divides. Break the system, unite the people."
After the disintegration of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement, McCafferty remained active in other women's rights groups, as well as focusing her journalism on women's rights. Her most notable work is her coverage of the Kerry Babies case, which is recorded in her book, A Woman to Blame.
McCafferty contributed the piece "Coping with the womb and the border" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.
In 1990, McCafferty won a Jacob's Award for her reports on the 1990 World Cup for RTÉ Radio 1's The Pat Kenny Show. McCafferty lived in Ranelagh, an area of Dublin. McCafferty published her autobiography, Nell, in 2004. In it, she explores her upbringing in Derry, her relationship with her parents, her fears about being gay, the joy of finding a domestic haven with the love of her life, the Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain, and the pain of losing it.
McCafferty received an honorary doctorate of literature from University College Cork on 2 November 2016 for "her unparalleled contribution to Irish public life over many decades and her powerful voice in movements that have had a transformative impact in Irish society, including the feminist movement, campaigns for civil rights and for the marginalised and victims of injustice".
Personal life and Death
McCafferty was in a fifteen-year relationship with the journalist Nuala O'Faolain.
She died in a nursing home in County Donegal on 21 August 2024, aged 80.
