SHE is Ireland's only female party leader, and she is the successor to David Ervine, one of the most popular politicians in recent history in Northern Ireland, as head of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP).The fact that the party Dawn Purvis heads is often described as the political wing of the notorious Ulster Volunteer force (UVF) makes her accession to the leadership even more remarkable.Unionism and loyalism have traditionally been male dominated, with women's roles largely confined to making the tea. In 1997, the Democratic Unionist Party's Ian Paisley Junior interrupted a speech by Monica McWilliams of the now defunct Women's Coalition, with cries of "moo, moo" - a telling illustration of some Unionist politicians' attitude to women. Purvis, 41, agreed that it is easier being a woman in Nationalist politics than Unionist. "If you look at the whole culture of unionism - the Orange Order, the Apprentice Boys - it's very male orientated. Women are more interconnected in nationalism," she said during a recent interview with the Irish Voice in Belfast."They seem to be more equal, more valued, than in the Unionist community, and I think that's reflective within out political parties as well."Purvis is a child of the Troubles. "I don't remember anything other than the Troubles. My memory is of violence and conflict," she said.Born in 1967, she grew up in the staunchly Loyalist area of Donegall Pass in South Belfast. When she was a young girl a bomb blew up a pub at the top of her street. "I ran up with my friends thinking we might be able to get some free bottles of lemonade at the back of the pub," she explained. They couldn't find any bottles lemonade, but they did manage to find a new drink called bitter lemon, "which didn't sound very nice." When young Dawn returned home her mother scolded her and told her that she could have been killed - a wall in the pub had collapsed just after she had left. Two people were killed that day.There was also a time when the British Army kicked the door of her house down in the middle of the night to evacuate her family as a car bomb was down the street. Shortly afterwards, it exploded and "bits of car were landing all over the place," she recalled, before adding, "And then we all went back to bed." On another occasion, while walking home from a Catholic neighborhood after having been to the launderette, she was attacked by a group of Catholic girls and lost a big black bag of clothes.When Catholic civil rights marchers were demanding "one man, one vote" in the late 1960s, Purvis's mother, who lived with her own mother for a time with three small children, didn't have a vote either. At the time, only rate payers could vote, which disenfranchised thousands of Catholics. But it wasn't only Catholics who were poor. "We weren't working-class - we were poor," said Purvis. Her parents, who were both Mormons, divorced when she was two. She left school at the age of 16 to work in a burger bar, got married at 22, and in 2000, got divorced. She has two teenage sons, Ernest, 17, and Lee, 16.In 1994, the year of the first IRA ceasefire, she was persuaded by a friend to join the PUP. "I joined the party on the understanding that it was about transformation," she said. "I didn't think the politicians we had were doing a good job of representing the interests of Loyalist working-class people."Loyalism was traditionally even more male dominated than unionism - the Loyalist paramilitaries, for example, unlike the IRA, didn't recruit women. Brian Lacey, the chairman of the PUP, recalls being at meetings with around 30 people, including members of the Loyalist paramilitaries, Purvis being the only woman in attendance.Fortunately for Purvis, and for Northern Ireland, her two sons won't have the same experiences of growing up in Donegall Pass as she did. According to Purvis, this is due, in no small part, to the work of the late leader of the PUP Ervine, on which the peace process was "so dependent on."Ervine played an important role in persuading the UVF, the Loyalist paramilitary group with close ties to the PUP, to ending its terror campaign. Ervine was also one of the Good Friday Agreement's most vocal supporters, at a time when Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party was doing its best to destroy the agreement. When Ervine died suddenly of a heart attack, stroke and a brain hemorrhage in January 2007 at the age of 53, there was much speculation that his party, so identified with his personality, would go with him."After David's death," said Purvis, "we were running around like headless chickens." With the support of Ervine's family, and her two sons, Purvis, then party chairman and a member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, put herself forward for the party leadership. She was returned unopposed. She then had to face the Northern Ireland Assembly elections in March, with much speculation that if she failed to win the PUP's only seat the party would join a long list of Unionist and Loyalist parties that have folded over the years. She managed to retain the seat.Since taking over as party leader, Purvis has won the respect of colleagues and rivals for putting her own stamp on Northern Ireland's political landscape. "She has wisely sought to establish her own identity and individual mark on politics, rather than remain in the shadow of Mr. Ervine. While that was always going to be a difficult task, she has been able to reflect accurately the voice of working-class loyalism," said Danny Kennedy, an assembly member for the Ulster Unionist Party.Robert Coulter, also a UUP assembly member, said, "Purvis has carried forward the torch that the late David Ervine lit and is playing a vital role in the task of bringing those on the extreme Unionist/Loyalist wing to accept democracy."Lady Sylvia Hermon, a UUP member of parliament in London, added, "She certainly hasn't buckled under the weight of added responsibility, either of being her party's only Assembly member or of being its first female leader."She may still have some way to go. The UVF, which had been busy feuding with other Loyalists and drug-dealing for much of the last number of years, announced in May last year it "will assume a non-military, civilianized role," without pledging to decommissioning its weapons, as the IRA had already done. And some UVF members, as with the other paramilitaries, are active in crime, she acknowledges.How would Purvis feel about living in a united Ireland? "It ain't going to happen," she replied. After being asked why she said, "I'll give you a hypothetical answer. If there were a majority of people - and I'm not talking about 50 plus one - it would need to be a sizeable majority. Then I think we would have 10 years of negotiations." And after those 10 years of negotiations, how would she feel about it? "We would have to see what would come out of them. The Republic doesn't want the black North. What we should be looking at is bringing the 26 counties of the Republic back into the union," she said, with a mischievous grin on her face.Purvis has faced far tougher questions than that about a united Ireland. As the only woman in a male dominated game she has also proven she can lead. In quick time she has drawn comparisons with her revered predecessor David Ervine. It won't get much better than that.