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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— June – July 2013
I
RELAND was in th position in world tables of women’s repre-
sentation in the lower house of national parliaments, ranked by the
Inter-Parliamentary Union in . In , I authored a report on
women’s participation in politics for the Oireachtas Justice Committee.
It found Ireland had fallen to th position, with only women TDs out
of (.%). Women currently make up % of our TDs but Ireland
has fallen to th position in the world rankings. This is because we have
never taken the positive action which has increased the numbers of women
entering parliament elsewhere.
The report found that women were being excluded from partici-
pation in political life by the “ Cs”: Culture, Cash, Childcare, Confidence,
and the Candidate Selection Procedures. International research shows that
political-party candidate-selection tends to exclude women from nomina-
tion. One key recommendation in the report was that legislation should
require political parties to select a minimum proportion of candidates of
each gender. This was based on successful similar initiatives in Belgium
and Spain.
This proposed change has now become law through the Electoral
(Amendment) (Political Funding) Act . The ‘opportunity quota’ law
ensures that voters will be given greater opportunity to elect a woman. It
leaves the choice to the electorate, in contrast to the type of ‘result quota’
laws which require a minimum number of women to be elected.
The Act requires political parties to select at least % women and
% men as candidates for the next general election. After seven years
the requirement will be to select at least % men and % women can-
didates. Parties that do not meet these targets will have their state funding
cut by half. This legislation should have a transformative effect on the politi-
cal landscape at the next election.
However, the legislation does not apply to local elections. No formal
quota will be in place for next year’s council elections. While I would have
liked to see formal quotas introduced for , political parties will still
need to recruit more women to run as candidates for local councils next year,
so that they will have sufficient numbers of well-placed women to select for
the general election likely in .
Research by Claire McGing and Adrian Kavanagh at NUI Maynooth
shows that the numbers of women candidates in local elections increased
steadily from -. In , women represented only % of all
candidates, but this rose at each subsequent election, up to .% by the
election. Disappointingly, however, the local election saw the
first decline since : women comprised only .% of all candidates
on the ballot paper.
In the election, the bigger parties put forward the lowest number
of women candidates: only .% of Fianna Fáil candidates were women,
and only .% of Fine Gael candidates. The parties which had introduced
internal quotas for women candidates in the run up to the local elections
(Labour, Sinn Féin, and the Green Party) did significantly better. .% of
Labour Party candidates were women; .% of Sinn Féin’s candidates;
and .% of Green Party candidates.
The percentage of women elected at local-government level increased
from until (according to research by Fiona Buckley at UCC). In
, women won % of seats at local level and by this had risen to
%. However, the election again saw the first decrease, as women
only won % of council seats. Political representation at local-government
level has always been at least % male.
Women’s low participation rates can change where political parties take
measures to increase the numbers of women standing as candidates. It
appears from the data that the greater the number of women candidates,
the greater the number of women who will be elected. With quota legisla-
tion in place for the next general election, and selection conventions for
the local elections already underway, now is a good time for the political
parties to start taking positive action to increase the numbers of women
who will be on the ballot paper for each constituency in . Democracy
demands representativeness.
Political gender
representativeness now
on the march
senator ivana bacik
opinion
Only 13.8% of our TDs are women but they must comprise at least
30% of candidates at the next general election
