Sir, – What a lather everyone gets into when there is even the suggestion that that our male politicians may not get an honest strike at “winning the room” during the current selection conventions.
Welcome to a woman’s world.
How infinitely irritating to discover that you are not the automatic kingpin based solely on your gender and the prerogatives it has wrought, ensured and upheld over the aeons.
The boys should try to keep their toys in the pram.
They are merely being expected to share, to make more space in the democratic process for the female half of the population. That’s right and that’s fair.
Otherwise why not introduce gender quotas for men?
They would then withstand the onslaught of insinuation that there aren’t enough candidates of sufficiently formidable and intellectual prowess to step up to the task, or that their suit is ill-fitting and was worn at least once before, or any of the other belittling and icy comments so often aimed at women to undermine their laudable ambition to take a seat at the table of power and politics. – Yours, etc,
PATRICIA MULKEEN,
Ballinfull,
Sligo.