Monica McWilliams
| Monica McWilliams | |
|---|---|
| Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast South |
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In office 25 June 1998 – 26 November 2003 |
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| Preceded by | New Creation |
| Succeeded by | Alex Maskey |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
28 April 1954 Ballymoney, Northern Ireland |
| Nationality | Northern Irish |
| Political party | Northern Ireland Women's Coalition |
| Residence | Belfast, County Antrim |
| Alma mater |
Queen's University Belfast University of Michigan |
| Profession | Professor |
Monica Mary McWilliams (born 28 April 1954) is a Northern Irish academic and former politician.
McWilliams was born in Ballymoney, County Antrim, grew up in Kilrea, County Londonderry and was educated at Loreto College, Coleraine. She is a graduate of Queen's University Belfast and the University of Michigan, and became Professor of Women's Studies and Social Policy at the University of Ulster.
McWilliams, a Catholic residing in south Belfast, co-founded (with Pearl Sagar, a Protestant social worker from East Belfast) the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition (NIWC), a political party with a vaguely feminist platform that declined to take any position on the principal unionist/nationalist dispute. The party secured only 1.03% of the popular vote and failed to win any constituency seats in the 1996 Northern Ireland Forum elections, but was granted two seats under the 'top-up' mechanism designed to ensure the inclusion of minor parties. McWilliams took one of these seats and was thus able to attend the multi-party negotiations that led to the intergovernmental Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which her party supported (but did not, as frequently reported, 'sign').
She was elected as one of two NIWC Members of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland (the other being Jane Morrice) on 25 June 1998, having secured 3,912 votes in South Belfast (9.6%). During the negotiations following the Agreement, she was the Chairperson of the Human Rights Sub-Committee until 2003. In 2001 she ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in South Belfast, securing 2,968 votes (7.8%). In the 2003 Assembly election her vote fell further, to 2,150 (6.9%), and she lost her seat to Sinn Féin. (In 2006 the NIWC ceased to exist due to declining electoral fortunes.)
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