Our daughters voices are important in politics
IT was with admiration and a touch of sadness that I watched Hillary Clinton’s interview on the Graham Norton Show recently. Never having watched her interviewed before I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought she came across as very strong, yet humble at the same time. There seemed a great injustice that it was her sitting there peddling her book as the loser of the presidential election, when it really is a role that would have suited Donald Trump much better.
She spoke about her greatest sadness being the disappointment she felt when meeting young girls, as she didn’t want her defeat to discourage them from a life in politics. Unfortunately, although there is an increase in female political representation, as it stands it is still a man’s game.
I don’t know do people really understand the nuts and bolts of what goes into being a politician. Until I became a journalist I didn’t. It was only when I had attended evening meeting after evening meeting for a newspaper that I realised these politicians are leaving their families at home to be here too.
At the time I was young and single and my only time concern was that the meeting would finish before closing time if I had planned to go out afterwards! But most if not all of the politicians present had come from day jobs, gone home briefly and left their families to come out again. In the early to mid 2000’s there really weren’t a lot of local female public representatives in the midlands. Those that were, were either single, middle aged or had teenage children. I cannot say I knew one woman with young kids on any of the councils. The reason was fairly straightforward; they just couldn’t juggle everything.
When I had my first child the nights I had to cover meetings for the paper, I felt resentment; that these meetings were preventing me from spending the two and a half hours a day with my daughter that I only had between work and her bedtime. So I can see why some women would be reluctant to commit every evening of their week to being a public representative, and it can literally be every single evening.
Now I’m not saying for a moment that men don’t mind leaving the home, I just know in my own case my children like me there when they are going to bed.
So what is the solution? I’m not sure. Perhaps we need women getting into politics a little earlier. When you consider that our Minister for Health Simon Harris is only 31, why could we not have younger female ministers as well?
Whatever the solution, it is important that we have greater female representation on a local and national political level. We are only four years away from the centenary of all Irish women over the age of 21 getting the vote. Before this in 1918, women over 30 who owned property were allowed to vote. There are at least 1.8 million women of eligible voting age in this country and yet we only have 35 women in the Dáil, comprising of 22.2 per cent of all deputies. While this is an increase of 40 per cent since the last Dáil that sat, we still have some way to go.
I think it’s up to our generation to encourage the next and let our daughters know that their voice is important. And so as Hillary Clinton said to little girls everywhere after she lost the presidential election, “never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance in the world to pursue your dreams.”