A man entering politics wouldn’t give a second thought to how he can fit in child care or domestic or family committments because he knows he can get away with not doing any of them because his wife will pick up the slack and because she does, without challenge, even if she too is working full time, he gets away with it.

So is it some biological thing that a women is incapable of understanding that if you choose to have a full time career, then you also can’t be a full time parent, you will alwyas be a full time time parent in one sense but not in the sense that you can do both properly, so the man knows he won’t be home to make dinner or read a story all the time and doesn’t get all stressed about it, so can’t a women think the same – who is laying on the guilt trip that not only can a women have a career, if she wants one, but she must also be a full time mother?

You said ‘many woman opt out because there are simply not enough hours in the day’. To do what? Have a full time career and be a full time mother – well you can’t do both. It’s that simple.

From what you say it keeps coming back women feeling they have to be somewhere else instead of being to focus on the job knowing the housework is being done and the childcare sorted, which it should be. A man doesn’t spend the day worrying if the dinner is ready or the ironing done, so why should a woman.

I’m not saying that the long hours are right or that the drinking culture is healthy but I don’t think they have developed as a means to keep women out of politics or business.

Women are just as good as men at golfing or drinking or being obnoxious and sexist.

We are told women bring a different perspective to issues and that more women would mean action on providing better childcare and other support, again support to what encourage more women to work or to juggle work and housework, why can’t being a housewife be given the same footing as being a career person, both are perfectly valid choices, except a housewife shouldn’t be made feel a failure because after getting her MBA she choose to raise a family and contribute to society that way, nor should a mother be made feel guilty for choosing to work 12 hours a day to get to the top, as long as each know when you come home you leave work behind and focus on the children or you don’t blame your children for why you stayed at home.

No female politican made an argument for any new perspective on any of the issues we face – I haven’t seen any new thinking from any female TD that makes me think they offer a different female perspective, regardless of whether they would ever have enough votes for that view. So why would we think 50% of the Dáil as women would result in different policies, what sort of different politics and why have none of the current women TDs ever advocated such policies now?

I personally don’t have any issue with quotas to break some barriers, as they had in Norway, but I’m not convinced more females will mean more equality because there is little evidence of women in general riasing sons and daughters to be more equal and instead they play a part in perpetuating sexist male attitudes – the Irish Mammy for example?

Working and caring for young children is a tough job, in particular working at senior level. Many women opt out because there are simply not enough hours in the day, even with paid support. Obviously opting out completely from caring for your children is not an option. You can’t just quit that job. Many men are resistant to change, for reasons outlined. Bringing up children makes an absolutely essential contribution to society/ humanity. It’s essentially what we’re here for, as a species.

If one agrees that women should have a real political voice, then one needs to listen to what woman have to say about the reasons that they, collectively or personally, feel or are excluded. It is almost irrelevant what the external perception is. There’s little point in telling them that it can’t be so because you don’t believe it to be so. Pointless distraction. I feel excluded by the drinking and golf culture that permeates provincial Irish business. You can’t ignore the fact that after-hours is used to develop personal relationships which help ease business/ political dealings. Telling us that we are imagining the obstacles smacks of chauvinism. Just because some men can’t perceive them (or empathise) doesn’t mean they’re not there. You can’t, as a group, tell us how we feel or what our opinions are, which is what some of the content (not yours in particular) of comments appears to consist of. That’s a strong contributory reason to lack of women in politics: men who presume they can speak for women. They can’t, singly or collectively. They’ve never been there.

What will go a long way to empower women politically is financial
independence. Equal pay for equal work, equal promotion, tax-deductible childcare, state-supported childcare. Some of these are happening slowly.

The societal attitude to women is changing, but as it’s been male-dominated for a few millenia, I hope that we aren’t assuming a similar rate of change in the other direction. That’s why supports are needed, maybe even temporary quotas. If you don’t agree with facilitating change, maybe, somewhere deep down you don’t really want more women TDs. Again, not you personally.

I find that women like to read other women and that happens
(believe it or not) outside of Political sites and through
social media tools such as blogs/Facebook and dedicated sites
like the NWCI.

I certainly prefer to read women writers btw and find the lack
of them on big sites off-putting.

Lets say women are equally or more qualified than their male counterparts as is the case among people in their early twenties at the moment. However, they choose partners who may be two to five years older and are therefore two to five years ahead in the career game(because women are “more mature” and therefore go for guys who eqaul that maturity). When push comes to shove (NO PUN INTENDED) and somebody has to look after kids and all that, the couple would be at more of a financial loss if his work suffers than hers. Similarly, in recessionary times, these kind of couples (and I know one) can find the less experienced partner (the younger female) gets laid off more easily and then becomes dependent on the male. What I have outlined here presumes no institutional gender bias and yet some roads still lead to women taking on the bulk of the home duties. Whether this affects their unwillingness/inability to run for the dail is another matter.

So the solution to all of the world’s gender problems – women need to start pairing up with significantly younger (2-5 years) men, so that they are the more experienced and the more economically and psychologically powerful person in the relationship. They won’t be passive aggressively or rationally steered towards more duties at home and they may have more social freedom to pursue things like political power. Close down all the gender studies institutes. You heard it here first.

This again comes back to the point that it isn’t politics that puts women off politics it’s domestic issues and that spills over into all sorts of other areas like online chatting or further education etc etc and that then goes back to why is it women still feel they can’t make a stand and get their husband/partner/other to do their fair share of housework/ childcare or other familiy things like shopping for elderly parents etc.

Is that because men just refuse to do their fair share or because women let them get away with it.

Then also why is that even when the other half of the relationship does offer help the women still has to/wants to organise who the nanny is or the cleaner etc instead of leaving it to the man – is it that women just simply cannot let go and deflect it by making out the man is rubbish and would get it wrong anyway when they won’t – because women were not born magically able to cook and clean and multitasks, they learnt how to, so men can learn too.