On Thursday evening in the Morris Inn, former first minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster spoke with professor Colin Barr, a historian of modern Ireland, about the struggles of women in leadership roles and the current political situation in Northern Ireland. The discussion was sponsored by the Keough Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and is the first in a series of conversations on women in leadership.
Barr described Foster, who served as first minister of Northern Ireland with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 2016 to 2017 and again from 2020 to 2021, as a “trailblazer” for women in politics in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The DUP is a unionist, loyalist party, which means that it wants Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom rather than joining the republic and is historically supported by Protestants.
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