Maud Gonne founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a revolutionary women's nationalist organization, becoming its first president.
On October 16, 1900, Maud Gonne founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann ("Daughters of Ireland"), a radical nationalist women's organisation created partly in response to the exclusion of women from existing nationalist bodies such as Cumann na nGaedheal. Gonne became its first president.
The organisation promoted Irish culture, language, and history among women and children, ran boycotts of British goods and imagery, and campaigned against the recruitment of Irish men into the British Army. It also organised the famous 1900 "Patriotic Children's Treat" for thousands of Dublin schoolchildren, a direct counter to festivities marking Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland.
Inghinidhe na hÉireann was historically significant as one of the first Irish women's organisations to combine feminist and nationalist aims, giving women an active political role at a time when they were barred from voting or holding office. Its members later produced the newspaper Bean na hÉireann and many went on to join Cumann na mBan, the women's paramilitary organisation linked to the Irish Volunteers.
The group's founding under Gonne's leadership represents a critical first step in organised Irish women's political activism, laying groundwork for women's participation in the 1916 Easter Rising and the broader independence movement.