Women on the campaign trail

Leader, Ruairi Quinn with Senator Kathleen O'Meara and Deputies Breda Moynihan-Cronin, Mary Upton, Liz McManus and Jan O'Sullivan…

Leader, Ruairi Quinn with Senator Kathleen O'Meara and Deputies Breda Moynihan-Cronin, Mary Upton, Liz McManus and Jan O'Sullivan at the launch of the Labour Party's "More Women Equals Better Politics" campaign in Dublin on Wednesday. Evelyn Mahon of TCD told how over a 20-year period, Labour in Britain had greatly increased its number of female MPs, aka Blair's Babes, through all-women shortlists, and by modernising politics and broadening the agenda. O'Sullivan, the party's equality spokeswoman said that while she was once known as a Kemmy Femmy, she didn't want to be known as a Quinn Babe. Women wanted to cut down on waffle and get on with the job and a survey had found a widespread perception among them that politics was about point scoring and corruption. She was happy that to date no woman in politics had been called before a tribunal or inquiry and neither had any member of the Labour Party. The new campaign aimed to bring female party membership to 50 per cent and they would come back on International Women's Day next year to see how they had done.