Why a tea bag is more sisterly than Mary Lou
ON The Big Picture, RTÉ’s documentary on women’s issues, Cork county councillor Danielle Twomey described the warm glow of solidarity that exists between the female minority on her local council. We all look out for each other because we know how tough it is for us in this job, said the mother of two young children. Or words to that effect.
Like most of us, Twomey would probably expect a similar atmosphere to have marked the centenary, in Leinster House, of female suffrage.
Well, it probably would have, had Mary Lou McDonald not shown the sisterly instincts of a tea bag when she discovered Mary Hanafin sitting in her customary Dáil seat for the all-female photograph to mark the occasion.
The Sinn Féin leader, who was late for the portrait, threw a strop, insisting that the former first female Government Chief Whip and Minister for Education sit somewhere else. ‘Who gave you permission to sit there?’ she barked to the astonishment of the assembled sisterhood, adding that she wasn’t sitting for any photograph until she got her seat back.
‘It was bullying, pure and simple,’ said Hanafin.
THE charge of bullying may be nothing new against Sinn Féin members and certainly Mary Lou is always proud to assert that she’s no shrinking violent. Now we know what she means. Yet it’s hard to imagine Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton, or indeed any female leader that Mary Lou might hope to emulate, being so petty and rude as to humiliate another person over a chair. Women who rise to the top in a man’s world have incredible steel and discipline, but they are also wise enough to know when they can let down their guard and join in the spirit of a special occasion.
That Mary Lou is so touchy about any imagined slight on her regal status may suggest that recent missteps have taken their toll on her self-confidence.
Who knows? In order to disprove the widespread belief that she is a figurehead and that the real power rests with the backroom boys in West Belfast, she might feel obliged to throw her weight about. She might be modelling herself on Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady’ who loved nothing more than posing with men, preferably on a tank, hair blown back in the wind.
There are few reasons for Mary Lou to say cheese when it comes to her leadership. The drubbing of Liadh Ní Riada in the Presidential race dashed party hopes about the appeal to middle Ireland of its new female leader with no links to the Troubles.
NÍ Riada’s explanation of her take home pay from Brussels also exposed the party’s boast of paying itself the average industrial wage as being self-serving propaganda. McDonald’s irresponsible response to the cervical cancer crisis, charging the HSE with withholding ‘vital life and death information’ was also less than what we deserve from party leaders.
Her U-turn about whether a border poll was a good idea in the light of Brexit raised eyebrows about who was really pulling her strings.
She may have had more luck convincing senior Republicans to support repealing the eighth, but the resignation of anti-abortion Peadar Tóibín doesn’t speak of a party convinced of its ideological stand. Surely a mark of party maturity and strength is the readiness to allow dissension in the fold.
The rash of miscalculations may be a sign that Mary Lou is losing her touch, so soon after donning the Sinn Féin crown. But perhaps the greatest hint of all is that, amongst women, she apes the Iron Lady instead of being herself.
THE Prime Time debate on specially created professorships for women between minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor and professor Patricia Casey had barely got going when it was brought to a close so that the state of the soccer team could be discussed. Oh, the irony.