No Job for a Lady

Watching Enda Kenny's speech at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis last weekend, mercifully less sub Kenneth Williams than usual, one thing struck me. Look around him. Right next to him, the dissidents, Simon Coveny, a knackered Richard Bruton and Lucinda Creighton. More striking still, of the twenty odd people sitting around him, bar five people, they were all men. In the words of Police Academy - "Johnsons, Lassard, as far as the eye can see." There's not a large representation of women in the Dail, 25 in all, 15% of the population of the Lower House. (See http://www.nwci.ie/blog/) The question is, why?

Penelope Keith plays an MP in 'No Job For A Lady'. 
Now get back in that kitchen and make us a rasher sangidge!

It seems odd, given that women are among the brightest minds in the Dail - Lucinda Creighton, brooding in the front row left of Enda, has been appallingly overlooked over the years. Rosin Shortall flexed her intellectual muscles in committees in the last Dail. In the past we had Liz O'Donnell, Olwyn Enright, Gemma Hussey, even, Mary O'Rourke and Mary Hanafin displayed considerable intellectual rigour in their time. Joan Burton was the Opposition Finance voice in the last Dail, when FG couldn't even decide who was leading the party.

In the shakedown following the last election, women remain underrepresented in Enda's government. But why?

Is it because:

• He's the fairest one of all?
• They're all taller than him?
• He has shoe envy?
• He doesn't want people with a better hair than him at the cabinet table?

I reckon this under-representation is because of a deeply ingrained institutional sexism, compounded by an deeper ingrained hostility in Irish politics towards education and cultivation. In our political class, does intellectualism hold the currency it does in the rest of Europe? Absolutely not. And it is the habitus of Leinster House, an unthinking 'it's always been this way' mindset.

Easy personal advancement in Irish politics is predicated on two things: expedience and (institutional) experience, and both genders have been complicit in this evolution. Being articulate, being well educated and intellectual is bad enough, but being female as well? No way.

So Joan Burton, loses out to Noonan and Howlin, so Creighton has to follow some truly uninspiring men around Brussels despite knowing her brief and knowing Europe better than anyone in the current government, with the exception of Noonan.

But this isn't just about women. Think of all the clever men who have lost out over the years because of this attitude towards intellect: Noel Brown, Justin Keating, James Dillon, David Andrews (Ray Burke's understudy!), Brian Lenihan Jr., who only belatedly got the nod from Bertie, and Martin Mansergh. All either didn't make it, or made it too late, and only when all other options were exhausted. Many more have avoided politics altogether and worked in the private sector.

It was Dr. Garret Fitzgerald who wrote in the journal Studies in 1964 about Ireland's prevailing hostility towards intellectualism. Each woman and man mentioned above is an intellectual on some level. The choice for them is a short lived career, the middle rung of junior ministerships, slumming it with with the backwoodsmen of this world, or rot in the Seanad making excellent speeches no one will hear, as Mary Robinson and Ivana Bacik have had to endure. Robinson broke free, and sure, look what happened. We had two former law professors in a row as President, making a mockery by stringing words together into 'ideas' and 'cogent thoughts'. Imagine if they'd had real power. But they wouldn't. Not unless a senior jock gets busted and Coach looks to the subs bench for a nerd to make up the numbers.

Thank God politics isn't the private sector, because as Bill Gates pointed out, a nerd will probably end up being your boss. For those brought up in the culture of Irish politics, if you're really unlucky, your boss might even be a woman. Here's the highlights of Enda's Ard Feis Speech, thanks to The Irish Examiner. Johnsons, Lassard...