Madam, - I was glad to see that you drew attention to the passing of Margaret Waugh ( The Irish Times, May 15th). This quiet, unassuming woman played a most influential role in the development of the Irish women's movement.
Affronted by the almost total absence of women in the Oireachtas, she literally got on her bicycle and visited women all over her neighbourhood and beyond in 1970, urging them to do something about it. The result was the Women's Progressive Association, which quickly became the Women's Political Association and spread across the country.
A non-party organisation, the WPA sent teams to canvass for women in all the elections of the next decades and was responsible for a wave of women entrants to local government, Senate, Dáil and Cabinet. Margaret played an important central role in the organisation during those early years. The WPA also became an effective part of the general push by women for wholesale change in laws and practices that had kept women in such a disadvantaged and weak position.
Mary Robinson was the first President of the WPA in the early years; her election as President of Ireland in 1990 was seen by many of the founders as a sort of culmination of Margaret Waugh's work.
While Margaret (who was 90 when she died in Wales) must have been glad to see women playing a more important role in Irish politics today, she would no doubt be urging young women to get on their bicycles to achieve the next breakthrough and get a "critical mass" of women into the Dáil (at least 30 per cent of the House). It has been a longer and harder struggle than she could have anticipated in the heady campaigns of those early days. - Yours, etc,
GEMMA HUSSEY,
Burlington Road,
Dublin 4.