Sir, - While taking me to task for advocating that women should vote for women, Jackie Fogarty (March 19th) manages to be patronising without adding anything new to the debate on the issue.
My use of your Letters page to recommend that women should vote for women is at least as valid as, for example, the editor of a newspaper advocating voters to vote for any of the existing political parties.
What have those of us who have voted for the male-dominated present and previous Dáils got over many years?
We got, among other things, a succession of governments which stuffed the boards of the semi-State companies with their cronies, passed laws which benefited multi-millionaire tax exiles who in turn shovelled money into their party coffers and, in some cases, made millionaires of people whom we thought we were electing to represent our interest.
For pity's sake, do we have to continue with this ad infinitum? Is it not rational to advocate that women, who are in the majority in the electorate, should have a larger representation in the Dáil? Is it naive to expect that, as a result of having more women legislators, standards would be raised and issues of importance to women would receive a higher priority?
Since the essence of democracy is that the majority rules, is there not merit in recommending that women use the franchise to vote more women into the Dáil? - Yours, etc.,
A. LEAVY,
Shielmartin Drive,
Dublin 13.