Feminist Foresight in Statelessness Transmission of citizenship by either parent was eventually legalised in Ireland in the 1956 revised Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act. 104 In the debates leading up to this Act, Ireland’s Department of Justice was determined to maintain conferral of citizenship by descent through a patrilineal line only, but de Valera successfully opposed the move, with the result that Irish nationality law became more progressive than both the 1935 Citizenship Act and the citizenship laws of Britain, the former coloniser. 105 The End of the Campaigns? The question as to what extent the citizenship equality campaigns of the 1920–30s came to an end at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 has no definitive answer. Most of the scholarship on the equal citizenship campaigns of the first half of the twentieth century focuses on the interwar period, and — perhaps at the height of those campaigns — the Hague Convention in 1930. Miller writes that, thanks to persistent demands to advance the status of women, the League of Nations Assembly in 1937 finally approved a plan for a comprehensive and scientific inquiry into the legal status of women throughout the world. 106 However, the work of the inquiry committee that was set up appears to have been brought to a halt by the beginning of the Second World War. 107 Nonetheless, the work of feminists in the 1930s would bear further fruit in the creation of the UN Status of Women Commission in 1946. 108 Successive international treaties and conventions would continue to crop up until the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was drafted in 1981. 109 And with it, at last, came a full and comprehensive convention requiring equal nationality rights for women. V PART 2: DECENTRING STATELESSNESS HISTORY — A DISCUSSION Introduction An analysis of the key events and characters from the early 1900s, described in part one of this article, can be a source of inspiration and lessons for today’s campaigns against GDNL. To draw out such lessons it is useful to reflect on the foresight of equality campaigners on statelessness issues, and on the nature of the opposition they faced, and also to question the role of race in the history of GDNL. 104 Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956 (Ireland) ss 6(1)–(2). (1) Every person born in Ireland is an Irish citizen from birth. (2) Every person is an Irish citizen if his father or mother was an Irish citizen at the time of that person’s birth or becomes an Irish citizen under subsection (1) or would be an Irish citizen under that subsection if alive at the passing of this Act. 105 106 107 108 109 Daly (n 7) 262. Miller (n 6) 237. ibid 238. ibid 237. ibid 239; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, opened for signature 18 December 1979, 1249 UNTS 13 (entered into force 3 September 1981). 57