Nicola Byrne, CEO 11890, speaks her mind…

Discussing a recent ESRI report on NewstalkFM radio on 13 December, Nicola Byrne, founder & CEO of 11890 had this exchange with Jonathan Healy

Jonathan: … Funny you mention politics, because that’s the one area where there has been absolutely no change. We seem to have had very few new female politicians coming through. There have been some, and some of them have gone on, but, if you look at the Cabinet, it’s mostly an “old boys” affair.

Nicola: Well we have seen a lot of changes.  I know we have only 14% women I think currently in the Dail, and I have one or two of them as friends, but the difficulty there is that the system in the Dail hasn’t changed. We haven’t had enough power & influence, and it’s been left deliberately that way, that it isn’t family-friendly.

The Dail goes on until 10 o’clock at night sometimes. If you’re a young mother, you can’t participate. We’ve lost one or two TDs to the fact that two working TDs when they got married, she had to cut her job because she just couldn’t put the hours in. So we haven’t built the system for equality.  We’ve actually just built the system to suit whoever was in power at the time.  ‘He who has the power is the king-maker’.  And so the Dail has remained a traditional male bastion for that reason.  It’s not some great mystery why it hasn’t happened.  The boys just suited themselves, and nobody stopped them.

Jonathan (laughing): I think they do that across the board in relation to gender issues…

Fianna Fail Commits to 30% for Local Elections

Well done to Fianna Fail for not only supporting the Government Bill on gender quotas but also for agreeing to ensuring that 30% of its candidates in the local election are female.

Currently, the gender quotas bill only covers general elections, we strongly believe that it must cover the local elections as well.

All politicians be they male or female cut their teeth in local politics.  They build their support networks and their confidence in advance of running for the national parliament.

If parties are serious about reaching a critical mass of female candidates  at the next general election then they must lay the groundwork at the local level in 2014.

The 50 50 Group wants to support and help political parties to reach that critical mass.