There has never been a more important time than the present for women to participate fully in public life in the North, Progressive Democrats deputy leader Liz O'Donnell said yesterday.
Addressing the University of Limerick's Women's Forum, she said she had been delighted to learn that a third of the SDLP candidates standing in the next Assembly election were women. "For too long the abrasive, poisonous and dangerous sectarian discourse that passed for politics in Northern Ireland excluded and repulsed many women," she said.
Women who had worked in the voluntary and community sector throughout the Troubles should "come into a new forum for their talents now", she said.