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MISSING. THE COMPLETE PICTURE IN POLITIC
Hillary Clinton, Segolene Royal, Angela Merkel and Condoleezza Rice. Add Nancy Pelosi, Wu Yi, Tzipora Livni, Han Myung-Sook and Michelle Bachelet to the mix and its hard not to celebrate the fact that more women are in key positions of political influence right across the globe in 2007 than ever before. If Socialist candidate Royal steals a march in France and lifts the presidency, a quarter of G8 nations will be run by women. These international success stories are, however, the exception rather than the rule and the history of women in Irish political life — where female representation languishes at a mortifying 13% — makes for highly uncomfortable reading. Countess Markievicz broke the mould in 1918 when she became the first woman to be elected to Dail Eireann. But in the 89 years since the Republican was appointed Minister for Labour, the representation of women in politics — despite the dramatic social transformation in Irish society — has never reached a critical mass. Or even got close to it. Markievicz would turn in her grave to know that it will take another 370 years, at our current rate, for the percentage of women in the Dail to reach 50%. But with more female faces staring down from pre-election billboards, are the times finally changing? And why is it that more women aren’t attracted to a life in politics, the one forum where they are guaranteed to be able to make a difference? Diane Abbott, the British Labour MP, has a theory. Maybe it is because politics is so important, she muses, that it is the last arena men are prepared to give up. Touche, but Abbott has a point. She observes that women have already conquered the “Big Beasts” of banking and communications; they have embraced entrepreneurship, but they draw the line at a career in professional politics. So why do we draw the line? “I have been racking my brain my entire political life trying to find an answer to that question,” says Liz McManus, the Labour spokesperson on health. McManus, a married mother of four and stay-at-home mum for over twenty years swapped her kitchen table for the cabinet table, serving as a Minister of State from 1994 to 1997. The former architect and award winning fiction writer was first elected to the Dáil in 1992 (a ministerial post is “a doddle” compared to raising children) and says that the lack of women involved in political life is unacceptable. “We have a 13% representation of women in Dáil Éireann, that is lower than sub Saharan Africa, but there is no reason why there shouldn’t be more women in politics,” she says. “In many ways, because politics is so dynamic, it should be attractive to women. Public life is a great career; demanding, yes, but it is precisely the kind of job that women do very well.”
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