Dowling was one of the group of 81 republican women prisoners in Kilmainham Gaol who resisted their transfer to the North Dublin Union as they did not want to be separated from two of their colleagues who were on hunger strike.
[1] Within the IWWU Dowling was a close associate of the militant socialist and pro-republican Helena Molony, which brought her into conflict with the more moderate Louie Bennett and Helen Chenevix.
She was an active member in the Irish section of Friends of Soviet Russia, visiting the USSR in the summer of 1930 with a delegation with Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington and Charlotte Despard.
After the legal re-interpretation of union rules on members receiving marriage benefit, Dowling was forced to resign as IWWU president and trustee in March 1932.
She continued to work with other groups, such as the British Boycott Committee, and opposed the ratification of the 1937 Irish constitution on the grounds of how it would affect women and their role in society.