Kerry Election Manifesto Launch
“What Women Want From the Next Irish Government”
The National Women’s Council of Ireland
Invite you to the Launch of our
Women’s Manifesto for Election 2007
On: Monday 16th April
In: Dromhall Hotel, Killarney
From: 10.30am – 1pm
RSVP by Thursday 5th April to encagc@nwci.ie
2 comments:
1. You don't represent "women". You represent yourselves, a political pressure group with an inflated sense of self-importance. I bet that many women aren't even aware of your existence.
2. As a taxpayer-funded entity, it's a disgrace that you are attempting to influence the election. The average PAYE worker, who couldn't care less about your policies, shouldn't be forced to pay for them being promoted. Not everyone agrees with your policies and worldview and would be happy if they knew that this is where their taxes were going. Indeed, a substantial number of people think your policies are crazy and are disgusted at being forced to pay for them.
3. Your official government mandate means that you enjoy a disproportionate power to frame the national conversation according to your own partisan ideological preferences. There is no good reason for the government to have a "women's council" to promote left-wing feminism. Anyone who wants left-wing feminism can easily vote for it at the election. Giving left-wing feminists an official mandate to campaign distorts the debate and weakens democracy.
Ideally, the next government will abolish the NWCI. The very least it could do is cut off all of your government funding. I would have a small amount of respect for your organisation if it stopped leeching off the taxpayer.
Interesting comments 'anonymous', but obviously inaccurate since up until recently most of the money for the NWCI came from funders not linked to the government in any way. The current funding is from the government which funds many community organisations throughout the country unless these are all left wing organisations as well. You don't define left wing so I'm unclear as to your definition.
Don't represent women - well actually they do, you could have critised that perhaps they don't represent all women but I'm sure they are aware that 300,000 women members isn't the full population of women and you would then be accurate. But then other than the GAA I can't think of too many other organisations that have 300,000 members anyway.
Obviously though you represent all PAYE workers and seem to know what the average worker wants perhaps you'd care to substantiate that. I think the NWCI wouldn't want all people to agree with what their policies were, if people did they wouldn't have a role in representing those more marginliased in society - or is this what you don't want to see, the weaker members of society being supported by organisations such as NWCI.
The NWCI has no official government mandate, perhaps you are not familiar with the consultation process, social partnership and the community platform all structures that the government engages with but doesn't always listen to and which advise provide information on a range of issues. I believe they call it a democracy.
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