Why Fianna Fail are losing women voters

national | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Monday October 03, 2005 17:19 by Annie Shipsea

Why Fine Gael will not gain any

Why the Labour Party will be ignored by them. Why Sinn Fein, Joe Higgins and Finian McGrath are our only hope.

Take the average Fianna Fail politician and have a good look. Chances are you’ll see a fat, misshapen, be-suited and not especially attractive example of the male of the species. In fact, where most of them are concerned, the average gargoyle has more appeal. Photogenic they are not.

For women, though, the kind of scenery these guys make is a minor issue. The big problem is that unreconstructed male chauvinism of every stripe is rampant among Fianna Failers. The transformation in the lives and attitudes of the women around them has passed them by, unnoticed. Confronted by an averagely educated, articulate woman, these guys simply do not know what to do with themselves. Their embarrassment is acute and the look of bewildered contempt on their faces would almost be touching if it weren’t for the atrocious influence on the lives of Irish women that these cloth-heads continue to exert. Local and national politics is reduced by men like these to the grubby little world of expedited planning permissions, monumental favours for business people and destroying the community initiatives of any other politician who begins to look as though he or she is actually doing something constructive. Pettiness, spite and jealousy reign supreme. Much better to make the other guy look bad than do something worthwhile yourself. Women are sick and tired of this sort of thing.

Fianna Fail is the party of business interests alone. They have nothing to do with the rest of us other than to destroy any policy initiative that might bring a real benefit to the community - particularly if it isn’t about making a profit. However, it is at exactly this point that the main interface between government and women actually lies. Women are the people who interact most of all with the professions and public services – as parents, daughters, wives and most importantly, in their own right. Yet nowhere is the meanness, contempt and chauvinism of this government more evident than in its management of these issues. It patronises and lies its way through all debate and when it is exposed for what it is really doing, it responds not by admitting that it got it wrong and changing its ways but by a redoubling of the same vicious chauvinism. No, Fianna Fail is the party of the ugliest and most ignorant minds in the country. It is the party of obnoxious bullies everywhere.

To overcome the negligence of Fianna Fail where infrastructure and public administration are concerned, women all over the country have taken to trying to deal with the issues themselves. The local voluntary group has now become an automatic response to impatience and anger at government spite. The voluntary group is of course almost an exclusively female preserve – as if these things had nothing to do with men. Strange, that. The 'patient', lying condescension of politicians addressing such groups has to be seen to be believed. Increasingly though, women are not amused at all by this stuff. We are becoming more than a little fed up at being treated this way and of our interests being ignored. Women also generally have a long memory when it comes to broken promises and no other party is more vulnerable to that charge than FF.

When we look around us to see what the alternatives are, there isn’t a great deal to make us feel encouraged. Fine Gael is an identical party essentially, only it wears a slightly more expensive suit and has better grammar. It’s representatives have a wider vocabulary to rely on and can usually polish up a speech to a passable shine but sadly, the same obnoxious chauvinism lies barely disguised beneath these characteristics. Vanity and priggishness are frequently an additional problem with FG. Nothing there for women, certainly.

The Labour Party, meanwhile has become the Now-or-Never-for-Rabbitte party and considerations like social policy, community infrastructure and the position of women are not even up for discussion. No self-respecting woman will want to put her interests in this particular waste-paper bin. Seeing Rabbitte in government would not be sufficient compensation for us – and someone really ought to mention this to him, fast. It’s a sorry spectacle to see the Labour party so shamelessly abandoning its voter base in such a desperate attempt to get into power. What on earth can they possibly achieve for the issues that women are concerned about when they are tied so impotently to the dictates of the chauvinist Fine Gael party? This is a truly depressing moment in Irish politics.

When you hear someone like Dermot Ahern (Minister for Foreign Affairs) accusing Sinn Fein of being ‘marxists’ you begin to think that they must be getting something right. Nobody becomes that exercised by something which is not a threat. With the abandonment of their ‘do as I say or Ill kill you’ policy, the rest of the SF manifesto begins to make sense. FF have been inclined to throw some mighty tantrums about the gains being made by SF of late. Instead of pouting and sulking about it, though, they would be better advised to look at the things that SF are advocating because the fact is that many of us, women voters, like what we are hearing and seeing. Moreover, at local level SF have been seen to deliver on their promises - where they have not been prevented from doing so by the coalition of other councillors ranged against them. If SF keep this stuff up, they would be a very electable and attractive alternative to the three main parties. SF policies are about people and about community – things that FF don’t give a fig about. So, women everywhere do now have an alternative – as do men who are concerned about something other than the screwing of profit out every possible corner of our life. That is why SF would be advised to lay off the Private Finance and PPP stuff which they are flirting with in the North. We have all had a belly full of this stuff and, for once in our lives, can we not learn from the self-evident mistakes of other countries with these sorts of initiative? Dirty tricks abound against Sinn Fein where local politics is concerned – such is the fear now coldly playing in the hearts of FF and FG at the rise and rise of Sinn Fein. But voters always find out about these things and generally use the ballot box to let people know what they think of it.

The PDs are quite simply beneath contempt for many women voters.

The Green Party will have to stop coducting itself like some sort of shrinking violet. With the exception of one or two people, we almost never hear from them and it now seems that they too are going the way of Labour and eschewing policies that, while popular with voters, are less so with potential power sharers. Women like to know who stands for what, and why. The Greens are making themselves increasingly irrelevant to this constituency when there is now more public awareness of the significance of environment to every aspect of our lives than ever before. As carers we are concerned about the environmental legacy we are leaving for our children. We are generally more conscientious about these issues than the average man. Women also have the most powerful role to play in implementing environmentally friendly life-style changes. So where the hell are the Greens?

Top of the league for this woman voter are Joe Higgins and Finian McGrath. Any independent minded politicians thinking of putting up for the next election should make a close study of the careers of these two men and they’ll see the sorts of qualities that define a decent politician.

It is a great shame to have to acknowledge that there are at present no prominent national female politicians who have not styled themselves on the traditional FF/FG bully role-model. In a country that is still riddled with chauvinism, it can hardly be a surprise that there are few if any women who are prepared to weather the vitriol and contempt reserved for people like Kathy Sinnott and who have dared to stand up to the gargoyles. The media response to Sinnott as a prospective politician was often riddled with naked chauvinism. But we urgently need more women of this calibre to represent us - not the fluff balls who are now being mooted for a hasty career hike in order to act as window dressing for the female vote. This kind of stuff doesn’t fool anyone, either. It's up to women to support any strong-minded and focused woman who can articulate our concerns and not to let the FF and in their media supporters deflect us from achieving true representation.