The choices for senators made by both political parties have come in for heavy criticism, with many community leaders upset at the lack of racial, cultural and gender diversity among representatives in the Upper House.

But PLP activist Rolfe Commissiong said women criticising the lack of women in the Senate were talking through a "white middle-class feminist ideology", and added that black men - like every senator named so far - are the most oppressed group on the Bermuda social totem pole.

"We, the members of the Business and Professional Women's Association of Bermuda are appalled at the fact that neither of the leaders of the two political parties have selected women to sit in the upper house of the Bermudian Parliament known as the Senate," Association president Barbara Lewis-Mills wrote in a Letter to the Editor.

"The Premier did not make a statement when he appointed his senators, but the leader of the Opposition, Dr. the Hon. Grant Gibbons stated that `the people of Bermuda have elected a number of very strong women in the House - you have to look at the overall team'. Dr. Gibbons, in one statement, has put the women of Bermuda back about 30 years.

"Should Sir John Vereker decide to appoint a woman to the Senate, it would still be an insult to the women of Bermuda."

Ms Lewis-Mills told The Royal Gazette. "Today there are a lot of issues that men don't look into that really affect women. So you need some sort of representation."

"We are achieving in every other arena. But now in the political world we are just being pushed back."

But it is not just the lack of women in the Senate that is a cause for community concern. Leaders were also troubled at the lack of representation for whites and the Portuguese community. "It's a slap in the face to say a white or a woman can't be there (in the Senate)," said community activist W.A. (Toppy) Cowen. "And to have losers in their place shows me they have not researched their options enough."

"I've always maintained that we should have a black leader," he said. "We have a black majority, and why shouldn't there be a black leader? It's the same with the Senate. I was a little disappointed that there were not any white people, but perhaps that may change. Now in the Senate you have a bunch of losers."

Mr. Cowen explained that Senators picked by the parties either were not leaders or were in the Senate only because they could not get elected to the House of Assembly.

"The Senate should be a place where senior citizens contributing to the country in the past should be, not losers who can't lead the country," he said.

He was disturbed at the lack of variety in the Senate. In a country where two thirds of the population are black and one third is white, "you would have thought at least one person in the Senate would be white".

That there are as yet no women in the Senate was "also insulting". he said. "Everything has to have a balance."

However Mr. Commissiong said not having a woman in the Senate was not what had enraged the Business and Professional Women's Association.

"Is this really about not having any women in the Senate or is it about not having Elizabeth Christopher in the Senate?" he asked.

He also offered some criticism of the Senate line-up, calling it not enough of a "progressive and/or centre-left orientation". However, he added: "I'm not about to start a petition in protest about that.

"I've always been leery of Bermudian women and/or organisations dominated by them who simply are prone to mouth what I describe as white middle-class feminist ideology without viewing it through the prism of their unique history and culture.

"They lump all men into the same category, as oppressors of women," he said - a generalisation which he claimed could not be made as black men were "essentially powerless" in the Bermudian pecking order.

And the public would never know Government did not approach women who turned down the offer of a position in the Senate unless Premier Scott stated so unequivocally, he said.

"It's pretty hard for me to see how they (the Women's Association) can say this," he said, adding that he regarded them as a minority which did not reflect the views of black Bermudian women as a whole.

"Give Premier Scott and his Government a break and time to breathe," he said.