When ‘widow’s mandate’ was Dáil route for women The parliamentary record shows that a number of female TDs raised everyday women’s issues in the Dáil

The widow's succession was most common in rural Fianna Fáil constituencies; however, a number of Fine Gael women TDs and Eileen Desmond of the Labour Party (who served as a cabinet minister) also entered political office after the death of their spouse. The Dáil widows generally did not raise i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Irish times
Main Author McGing, Claire
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dublin The Irish Times Ltd 12.12.2018
Subjects
Elections
Politics
Women
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Summary:The widow's succession was most common in rural Fianna Fáil constituencies; however, a number of Fine Gael women TDs and Eileen Desmond of the Labour Party (who served as a cabinet minister) also entered political office after the death of their spouse. The Dáil widows generally did not raise issues that we would categorise as feminist (and parliamentary culture would not have allowed them to do so, even if they wanted to), but the parliamentary record shows that a number of them did raise everyday women's issues on the floor of the Dáil. [...]most women had impressive results at the polls and long political careers.