Holly Cairns on sexism in politics
Sexism in politics is rife, Holly Cairns, Cork’s only female TD, tells
EVERY so often, Holly Cairns will receive a tweet that contains sexist undertones — such as the one sent in recent months describing her as an “overly emotional, angry, feminist who needs to calm down and stop thinking people don’t like her because she’s a woman”.
“They don’t like her because she’s unlikeable and has stupid ideas,” added the tweet.
The Social Democrats TD has become prone to misogynistic trolls and deals with the toxicity of Twitter by simply ignoring it.
“I don’t want to use my time on that, I don’t want to have to address it,” she says from her West Cork home.
But when Fine Gael TD Joe Carey liked a tweet that referred to her as an “ignorant little girl” and described her remarks on opposing funding for greyhound racing as “waffle” last year, the 31-yearold says she had to intervene because it was “unacceptable”.
“That was different, this is a member of a State board in 2020 referring to an elected woman in this way, which was completely out of line.
“That’s not a troll. Even though women all over Ireland don’t want to have to address the everyday sexism we’re so used to, sometimes it’s unavoidable.”
Sexism in politics is “more prevalent” in local councils, Cairns says, but adds that central government has much to learn, too. As a new member of the sub-committee on Dáil reform, she is now helping to review its standing orders, which have been the same for almost a century.
“I have checked in the standing orders and it says chairman 137 times, it says chairperson twice, and it doesn’t say chairwoman at all.
“We’ve been reviewing these standing orders for almost 100 years and nobody noticed that we don’t acknowledge the fact women sit on chairs,” says Cork’s only female TD.
She also prefers to ignore Ireland’s far-right movement, declining a request from Ireland AM to debate one of the organisers of a protest scheduled to take place in Cork City yesterday.
“I said ‘no, I’m not going to help provide a platform for this and I think that’s something that we all need to do’.”
Still, she believes the Government should make an effort “to understand where this is coming from and try and address it in the most effective way, not just going out and condemning it all the time”.
“Don’t get me wrong, we have to condemn it, but what is going on for these people? We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, a year into rolling lockdowns. People are struggling and mental health has never been prioritised in this country, so how do we improve this?”
After finishing school during the financial crash, Cairns was part of “another generation destined for immigration” and admits to having felt “quite a resentment towards Irish politics” at the time.
‘It sickens me to see the big parties throw slaps at each other over the past. We need to look to the future’
“I was going out and protesting about the banks being bailed out and just generally feeling disillusioned. I almost felt like the words like political party were dirty words.”
Taking part in the campaign for same-sex marriage was a “light bulb moment”, when she realised how effective it is to knock on doors.
“People would always talk about my constituency — and I think loads of constituencies in Ireland — as kind of conservative by default, you know, by virtue of being in a rural area. I just knew, from growing up here, that wasn’t true.”
When she announced her decision to stand for Cork County Council in 2019, winning a seat by a single vote before contesting the Dáil election a year later, she was “laughed at”.
“The newspapers, in the predictions for the local elections, not only did they not predict I’d get elected, they didn’t even mention me as a candidate,” she says.
That was then. Now, the Soc-Dems agriculture spokeswoman is on a mission to highlight climate change.
“We’re seeing huge portions of the world becoming uninhabitable, it’s just the biggest injustice. The communities who will be most affected by climate change are the most fearful of climate action.”
She says the Government’s position on climate change is “a massive failure” and suggests its agricultural policy has resulted in “a pointless debate with farmers pitted against environmentalists”.
Cairns admits to finding it “challenging” when the electorate “consistently vote for the same thing over and over again, and expect something different to happen”, liking it to “people voting for their grandparents’ future rather than their own and focusing on the past and Civil War politics”.
“God, it just is so sickening in the chambers to hear the bigger parties throwing slaps at each other about the past all the time. I wish we could focus on the future a bit more, because there’s a lot that needs to happen.”
As for greyhound racing, it’s a “financial basket case”, she says, disagreeing with those who see it as an essential part of rural Ireland.
“There are no tracks in rural Ireland and in the context of a global pandemic when we’re not paying student nurses, and we don’t have enough refuge space in relation to domestic violence, the Government is upping greyhound racing funding to €20m.”
She describes the photo shared on social media last week of racehorse trainer Gordon Elliott straddling a dead horse as “bizarre”.
“I’m rarely struck for words. I’ve never seen anything like that… the kind of disrespect. The animal was already dead, but it doesn’t instil confidence in the industry and that’s a shame.”
The controversy surrounding mother and baby homes has seen Cairns at her most vocal, with the gravity of it “difficult to digest”.
“We’re talking about the worst human rights violations imaginable, like incarceration, forced family separation, disappeared children, mass, unmarked infants’ and children’s graves, torture and slave labour — 100pc facilitated by the State.
“That man sitting on the horse is nothing compared to putting dead children into a disused septic tank,” she says, at a time when there is “virtual immunity for rapists”.
When she’s not batting for her constituency, after a four-hour commute to Dublin, Cairns can be found working on the family’s 30-acre farm in Skibbereen, which sells organic vegetable seeds.
“The farm is called Brown Envelope Seeds,” she smiles.
“In hindsight, we should have named it something else, but we didn’t know I was going to go into politics.”