Starting in the early seventies, the Irish underground organization IRA began to accept women. The prospects for them were the same as for everyone in the IRA: prison or death. In thoroughly researched portraits, Marianne Quoirin depicts an extraordinary chapter of female emancipation and European contemporary history: What drove these women to risk their lives? To sever ties with family and friends in order to carry out attacks and shoot at soldiers and police officers? For the first time, former female IRA fighters speak in this book about their motives for killing for a political conviction – and about the constant fear of being killed.