Madam, - Writing about the Northern Ireland election campaign Fionnuala O'Connor (Opinion, February 23rd) rightly declares it to be "massively, shamingly male". She also mentions that politics in Northern Ireland was in the past "deeply unattractive" to women.
It is true that in all democracies there are many difficulties preventing women from becoming candidates in elections. What is more difficult to explain, however, is the fact that those few women who do get through the system and become candidates get on average fewer votes than male candidates.
The extreme example of this was Monica McWilliams of the Woman's Coalition in the last Northern Ireland election. She was in competition with male candidates for the last seats in a middle-class Belfast constituency. An eliminated woman candidate had nearly 3,000 votes to be distributed. Out of those Monica McWilliams received fewer than 50 transfers and she lost her seat by a little over 100 votes. - Yours, etc,
A LEAVY,
Shielmartin Drive,
Dublin 13.