Will the hand that rocked the cradle crush the Soldiers of Destiny?

By Dónal Hassett

On her election as President of Ireland, the first female and the first non-Fianna Fáil politician to hold the highest office in the land, Mary Robinson was quick to thank Mná na h-Éireann and declare that they “instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system”. With the Dublin Euro-constituency seemingly too close to call, it may well be that these same women will toll the death-knell once more for the Soldiers of Destiny.

Yesterday’s Flora Mini- Marathon brought 40,000 women onto the streets of the capital, and though the good weather coupled with the huge funds raised for charities made for a jovial atmosphere, public anger was still to be found boiling away under the surface. If Mary Lou McDonald is to hold onto her seat and scupper Eoin Ryan’s chances to save Fianna Fail European seat, surely women will be her big hope.

Female voters often tend to favour female candidates which may help the Sinn Fein MEP, while a recent Irish Times poll has shown that women remain more anti-Lisbon than men, though opposition among them to the Treaty is weakening. Fianna Fail will seek to use Ryan’s running mate Eibhlin Byrne to attract the female vote to the party and then seek to transfer them on to Ryan. Mary Harney’s intervention in favour of Ryan may well secure the middle-class female vote, who would never dream of voting for Sinn Fein, for the ailing Ryan campaign.

However, it must be recognised that, while certain patterns do exist among female voters, women do not constitute a voting block and that social divisions are far more important in dictating the outcome of an election. While both candidates will seek to woo the capital’s women, pollsters can only second-guess the outcome on Friday’s poll.

Will the votes of ‘respectable’ middle class ladies come to Eoin Ryan’s rescue on June 5th or will it be a case of Girl Power pushing Mary Lou over the finish line? And what of the dark horse, Joe Higgins? Can the socialist stalwart use his lyrical Dingle tones to seduce the capital’s women?

As Billy Connolly once said “A woman’s mind is as complex as the contents of her handbag; even when you get to the bottom of it, there is ALWAYS something at the bottom to surprise you”. Only time will tell what choice the fair ladies of our Fair City will make on June5th.