Our pioneering female politicians
Martina Fitzgerald’s profile of female politicians is an important reminder of how far we have still to go
Acracking book often springs from a moment’ s inspiration or a single, simple premise. Robert Harris, one of the world’ s greatest thriller writers, tells of how he came to write his debut smash hit Fatherland. The then political journalist was on holidays in Sicily when he took a dip in the sea. Plunging beneath the waves he surfaced near the shore to hear German voices around him.
Standing waist high in the Mediterranean among those tourists it occurred to him, ‘This is what it would be like if Germany had won the war.’ He figured they’d have owned this Sicilian beach along with everything else. He got out, dried off, grabbed a paper and pen and the story of Germany ruling the world was born.
I don’t know if RTÉ journalist Martina Fitzgerald came up with the central premise for her debut book Madam Politician while swimming but it is nonetheless bracing.
The premise is that of the 21 women who have served in high political office in the history of the Irish state, 19 are still with us to be interviewed for Madam Politician; The Women At The Table Of Political Power.
This of course is not down to a unique longevity among Irish women politicians.
It is because so few have been given a top job by their male superiors and most of them within our own lifetime. For women have always been subordinate in Irish politics and will remain so until one becomes taoiseach. We have had a pitiful 19 women Cabinet ministers in almost 100 years. We have had two women Presidents. They are stark, shameful numbers.
Countess Markievicz was appointed a minister in April 1919. The next woman to achieve any high political office was Máire Geoghegan Quinn, 60 years later, who became minister for the Gaeltacht in 1979.
She was appointed by Charlie Haughey for helping him oust Jack Lynch. In this appointment Haughey showed what a progressive politician he could be. But this book shows that, as was always the way with Charlie Haughey, it was his dark side that dominated. Fine Gael minister Gemma Hussey recounts a disgusting experience in the 1980s when the Fianna Fáil taoiseach came up behind her and snapped her bra strap during a debate on legislation about marital rape.
It is the accounts of sexism, groping and sexual assaults that made the headlines in the promotion of this book, which is sad since it should be a more uplifting read.
Yet Martina Fitzgerald is a proper journalist, so she does not omit the concerns of those women who have lived the experience of Leinster House.
I must declare some interests. I shared an office in Leinster House with Martina for many years. I heard muttering in Leinster House when Martina became political correspondent for RTÉ and landed one of the most high-profile jobs in Irish journalism. There was certainly resentment, and I’d say some jealousy, when driven to work harder than many of her male colleagues, Martina showed many up.
Another declaration of interest – I am married to a woman politician, the Fianna Fáil senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee.
So I read with some personal fascination the accounts of sexism and unremitting focus on the visual appearance of women politicians. For I understand the extra pressures women politicians work under.
Yet, like everything in politics,
‘As was always the way with Haughey, it was his dark side that dominated’
the incessant sexist behaviour and sexual bullying that still permeates Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin serves a political purpose. It belittles the woman it is aimed at and puts her in her place. And if she reacts, it also damages her politically.
For now she is not only overweight, or a dumb blonde or badly dressed she is also shrill and over-emotional. A woman is different as she is in a minority in Irish politics and that difference is exploited.
Irish politics is littered with overweight male politicians yet I rarely hear their appearance and weight problems commented on in Leinster House. For much of my time there, Mary Harney dominated Irish politics and I heard repeated references to her fluctuating weight. A female colleague, Mary Hanafin, recounts in the book of being at a Christmas pantomime that made fun of her PD comrade’s weight. Ms Hanafin complained.
Ms Harney herself says that such commentary affected her family more than her. ‘My mother used to get so upset. And that would upset me.’ Poignantly, she would say ‘don’t let mummy see that’.
And women can’t win. Ms Harney says that her colleague, Liz O’Donnell, was offended when she read a headline referring to her as a ‘blonde bombshell’. She correctly ascertained it was done to undermine her political credibility.
Certain standards were laid down for women, often by men who were to be disgraced later in their career.
Following the 1977 general election Máire Geogeghan Quinn was socialising with some Fianna Fáil colleagues. She recalls: ‘I remember using the F-word in the restaurant or in the bar. That came about because I was in company of people who were using it in the conversation. And Pee Flynn, of all people…“Now, Madam,” he said, looking across at me, “I’m going to charge you 50 pence every time you use the ‘F word’ in future.”
‘Jesus, by the end of the first week he had a pile in the jar, and he did, he followed through on it. And it cured me,’ she said.
Pee Flynn, it seems, displayed ingenuity in collecting even the smallest donations.
Of course journalists like me must accept our responsibility but, in our defence, what we write is driven by the briefings we receive. And they mostly come from male politicians seeking to advance themselves in a brutal world by damaging an opponent.
Elsewhere Geoghegan-Quinn recounts that when a supposedly conservative politician like her was given the post of minister for justice, it was put about that any chance of liberal reform of our highly conservative social legislation was ‘f***ed’.
Ms Geoghegan Quinn went on to decriminalise homosexuality in 1993. This historic move opened the way for Ireland, in 2017, to have its first openly gay Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.
But those who had hoped that Ireland now had a leader who would champion the cause of a neglected minority, women, have been disappointed. He has had a number of reshuffles yet women have not seen their representation increase.
So for an important insight into the world of women politicians, read this book, written by a woman. And do it while we are honoured to have nearly all these ceilingbusting women around to thank.
‘It is the accounts of sexism, groping and sexual assaults that made the headlines’