Speeding up the slow train for women to Kildare Street

IT'S official. Vonnie Roche of the Women's Political Association has announced it: at this rate it's going to take five centuries for women to be on the same footing as men at the top in Irish politics. So, is it disingenuous to keep on telling our daughters that they - definitely - are going to inherit the earth, along with men of course? Better maybe to stick the message in a bottle and toss it in the sea so that when they come along - those brave young women in the year 2497 they'll know: our time has come.

Whether or not to pull women out for special treatment in this election was the question. Lots of women, including one of the youngest candidates, Joanne Harmon, are against quotas for women on the grounds that positive discrimination smacks of lip service. It's 20 years now since the WPA launched its landmark "Why Not A Woman" campaign. Women canvassed for women; everyone wore special badges and the number of first preference votes given to women doubled from 40,000 to 80,500 in the 1977 election. Six women were elected to the Dail.

Though that figure rose to 23 during the life of the last Dail it has been a slow train to Kildare Street for women in the intervening two decades. Fourteen per cent of TDs being women as against 86 per cent men, as the country prepares to enter the 21st century, just doesn't feel right and there's no real indication that June 6th is going to make a vast difference. For starters, there aren't enough women running.

Tony Blair was right when he said women only shortlists, operated by the British Labour Party, weren't ideal. But, surrounded by what sections of the media called his babes - the 101 newly elected Labour women MPs - only days after the election, he looked like he was learning to live with the special treatment system that had brought many of them there. With 119 women now in the House of Commons, there has been talk of everything from the need for more lavatories to just how this sudden influx of women will filter through into the way Britain is run. One of our EU partners, Sweden, is already streets ahead. More than 40 per cent of its parliament is female and half its Cabinet women.

FEMALE quotas haven't been applied in this country and, attractive and all as the British election made such affirmative action seem, there's something even more attractive about the fact that however many women walk into the Dail on June 26th, they'll be there off their own bat.

In its current "Vote Her No 1" appeal, the WPA isn't arguing for women just for women's sakes. The rest of the slogan says it succinctly: "Vote For Balance". One argument against positive discrimination has always been the quality issue; getting the right person for the job not just the person of the right gender. But defying that is a central tenet of human nature: there is no cadre elite of human beings, or if there is we've no guarantee they'll all want to go into politics. There are simply women and men, some brilliant, some decidedly underwhelming. Some gifted, some flawed.

Inevitably some of the women running in this campaign are better than others. But the one thing each one elected will be when she takes up her seat is another link in the chain that will ultimately make the powerhouse of politics more reflective of the public it represents. It stands to reason that a legislature that will in all likelihood be shaping the Ireland of the new millennium needs to be as gender balanced as the country outside. An electorate that's 52 per cent female needs elected representatives who reflect that: how else can the often significantly different perspective women have on social and economic issues percolate into the make and shape of the lives we lead?

As the WPA says: "There must be more of us." Think about it. It makes sense.