THE CULTURE of Irish men was sometimes reflected poorly in the Dáil, Anne Ferris, recently elected Labour TD for Wicklow, told the Parnell Summer School yesterday.
“Indeed we need only look back a few weeks to the comment made by three Independent TDs about a female colleague in Fine Gael [Mary Mitchell O'Connor] to instance this culture,’’ she added.
Ms Ferris said she looked forward to the day when an electoral campaign could be based more around ideas and ideals and not the amount of money one could throw into a campaign.
“In terms of childcare, I know first-hand the difficulties of trying to enter into a life in politics while bringing up children,’’ she added.
“I have girls of my own, women now, but back before I served in Wicklow County Council and the Bray Town Council, the obvious care they needed, as all children do, was provided primarily by [their mother].”
Ms Ferris said all the competing issues did not have a direct impact on confidence levels for aspiring women politicians.
“Indeed, it has been stated by some researchers that for women to exert a substantive influence on the decisions taken by the legislature, it must reach a official mass of at least one-third of the seats present,’’ she added.
“I do wonder whether, if we had this critical mass in the past, if women would have been as poorly treated as they were in the past decades.”
Ms Ferris said she could speak on many instances of maltreatment in that regard, but she wanted to focus on current events.
“Justice for Magdalenes,” she continued, “is an issue that is close to my heart. I find it abominable the way that vulnerable women were treated by church and State.
“It horrifies me to think of how they were failed by a society that saw them as sinners and workhorses.”
Referring to the recent Cloyne report on clerical sex abuse, Ms Ferris said she found it frustrating that an institution supposed to behave with compassion and love demonstrated nothing more than disregard and hate for its own practitioners.
Ms Ferris said: “They systematically covered up and lied about what went on in that diocese and elsewhere. I know sometime this month the Vatican is due to give its response to the report, and I hope, perhaps in vain, that some measure of humility and guilt will be displayed.’’ Ms Ferris asked whether things could have been different if there had been less “kowtowing” to a patriarchal church and State. “I’d like to think that maybe they would have been,” she added.
“Maybe more women in the most powerful House in the land could have prevented other women being removed from their house and placed in an institute no one could call home.”
Maybe, she added, the critical mass of women could have challenged the male-dominated church.
Ms Ferris said encouraging women into politics should not be the “be all and end all” of increasing gender equality.
“We need to see more women in every sector of society, from judiciary, for instance, to representation on State boards.’’
