Feminist Foresight in Statelessness opposed altering a law regarding the nationality of married women. 87 However, O’Higgins suggested that Britain was not in agreement either about altering the law, and claimed that Britain was using South Africa and Ireland as scapegoats for their inaction on women’s equality. 88 He argued that if the position of South Africa and Ireland became known then they would be ‘delivered into the hands of the feminist organisations of the Commonwealth of Nations as a whole burnt offering … and would be represented as the enemies of mankind’. 89 O’Higgins wanted the draft report to protect the anonymity of the delegates, and, according to Mary Daly it appears that he had his way. 90 Ireland was at the time a burgeoning Catholic Church-dominated state. At the Imperial Conference, O’Higgins claimed that separate nationalities for husband and wife were ‘not quite in accord with the concept of a Christian marriage’. 91 This was echoed at the international level by a number of Catholic associations fiercely opposed to equal nationality rights between men and women. 92 Such Catholic organisations argued that the unity of the family must be protected through a commonly shared nationality by mother, father and children. A memorandum by the International Union of Catholic Women’s Associations stated that the aim of any new laws on nationality should not be the emancipation of women. 93 On the other hand, there were Catholic organisations that maintained that equal nationality rights between men and women had in no way affected family unity. These organisations cited Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay as Catholic countries where no distinctions on the basis of sex were made in nationality laws. 94 Furthermore, two Catholic petitions, one signed by men, one by women, were sent to the League of Nations in 1932, in support of equal nationality laws. The petitions received 8,000 signatures from 23 countries. 95 In Ireland, shifting political landscapes and leaders would eventually change the state’s position on GDNL. Following a general election in Ireland in 1932, O’Higgins’s party Cumann na nGaedheal (The Irish People’s Party) was defeated by Fianna Fáil (The Soldiers of Destiny). Éamon de Valera became Prime Minister and, in the same year, became acting president of the League of Nations. De Valera, who was born in New York to an Irish mother and a Cuban father, favoured gender-neutral laws, but only up to a point, as will be seen. By 1935, under Fianna Fáil’s rule, some progress was made and Irish nationality by descent was permitted, in certain circumstances, through either parent: [A] person born before 6 December 1922 [the date of the adoption of the Constitution of the Irish Free State, the first Irish constitution] outside the state could claim Irish citizenship … if one parent had been born in Ireland. But for those born outside the state after that date, citizenship could be transmitted only through the father. 96 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 ibid 250. ibid. ibid 251. ibid 251 n 23. ibid 249. ibid 254. ibid. Guerry (n 7) 89. ibid. Daly (n 7) 260. 55