Sir, - It is always amazing when people read into things something that simply isn't there. According to Ross O'Daly (July 21st), the "Overall President" of the DIT Students' Union, I wrote an article in The Irish Times recently "about the lack of females for election to students' unions in general, but only UCD was mentioned" - a point about which offence was taken.The trouble is, I wrote no such article. On July 9th I did write about how women seem to have stopped running in top sabbatical elections in UCD Students' Union. No other students' union was mentioned! The only other elections featured were national elections, not students' union elections. A simple question was posed: is choice as much as discrimination a factor in keeping women out of elections?UCD Students' Union offered a fascinating example. In the view of past union candidates (male and female) it offers a relatively flat electoral playing field - no male-dominated political parties controlling nominations, young voters with less sexist ideas about men and women, fewer family commitments among potential women candidates than in the outside world. Yet the number of women contesting the top four union posts has declined sharply (no women among the officers thisyear, last year or the year before).
Why? The general view among the sexes was that in UCD (the only students' union featured) women are choosing not to run for reasons unconnected with sexism.The only mention of students' unions in general was in the headline (which I didn't write). As Mr O'Daly should know, a headline gives a very short summary of an article; in this case that it involved "student politics" and "women running for top union posts". It presumed that the reader had the intelligence to read the article and notice how, since it mentioned only UCD Students' Union, it must only be about UCD Students' Union. Simple, really! - Yours, etc., Jim Duffy,Crumlin, Dublin 12.