Sir, – My oh my. What a lather our male politicians get into when there is even the merest suggestion that that their days of sexist advantage in gaining and holding on to power in democratic elections be declared numbered – as so witheringly and accurately described by Una Mullally ("Men should stop whining about gender quotas", Opinion & Analysis, November 30th). How infinitely irritating to discover that you may no longer be the automatic kingpin based solely on your gender and the prerogatives it has wrought and jealously guarded over the aeons.
The boys should try to keep their toys in the pram. They are merely being expected to share, to make more democratic space for the female half of the population.
That is self-evidently fair. Otherwise why not an experiment in gender quotas for men, an invitation of sorts to a woman's world, where they must fight to be heard and acknowledged? Where they must face the contemptuous suggestion that there aren't enough candidates of sufficiently formidable and intellectual prowess to step up, or that their delicate sensibilities are insufficiently robust for the cut and thrust of the Boy's Own world of political intrigue, that their proclivity for one-upmanship and needy cliquishness is detrimental to the notion of fairness and transparency, that maybe they should be considered because some of them are not half-bad looking, that their suit is ill-fitting and was worn at least once before, or any of the other belittling and snide sideswipes so often aimed at women to undermine their laudable ambition to take a seat at the table of power and politics. – Yours, etc,
PATRICIA MULKEEN,
Ballinfull,
Sligo.