Category Archives: Successful women

Voices & Views from Local Elections 2014

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How women fared – reflections and lessons for the general election
Claire McGing, Maynooth University/5050 Group, claire.mcging@nuim.ie

On Friday, January 30th, a fantastic seminar on women and politics was organised by the Longford Women’s Manifesto Group and the 5050 Group in Longford. With a general election due in the next year, it is important to reflect on how women candidates fared in last year’s local elections and to look towards how parties and women’s groups can ensure the election of more women TDs. Gender quota legislation enacted in 2012 means that parties must run 30% women candidates (to rise to 40% after seven years) or else lose one-half of the funding they receive annually from the State. At present, just 27 out of 166 TDs (16%) are women and this is a record high. The figure places Ireland at 94th in the global world rankings for women’s representation, sandwiched between Chile and Azerbaijan. At local level one in five councillors are now female, but this is below the EU28 average of 32 per cent for women’s representation in local politics.
On the day, Dr Adrian Kavanagh (Maynooth University) gave an in-depth analysis of female candidacy and election in the 2014 local elections; Cllr. Kathleen Shanagher (Independent), Cllr. Maura Hopkins (Fine Gael) and Nora Fahy (local Fianna Fáil candidate) openly discussed their political experiences with Longford Leader editor Sheila Reilly; Johnny Fallon (local political analyst) gave an insightful (and humorous) contribution into party politics and why he supports gender quotas; and I outlined the findings of research I have conducted on the barriers to female representation, particularly in rural areas.
Owing to various institutional and cultural factors, the main theme to come out of the event was the significant urban-rural divide in terms of women’s representation. The vast majority of women TDs elected since 1918 have come from urban-based constituencies. Of the 28 females in the current Dáil three-quarters represent constituencies in Dublin or Leinster, while the five districts with two women TDs are all in Dublin or Meath. Illustratively, Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) is the only female TD in the whole of Connacht and Heather Humphreys (FG) in the Republic’s Ulster counties. All this means, as my presentation showed, that 42 per cent of the Irish population (and 43 per cent of women) currently have no female TDs, the vast majority outside of Leinster. By contrast all constituents have at least one male TD and most, of course, have more than this.
Adrian Kavanagh’s talk showed that there is also a geographical dimension to female vote-winning and representation in local councils. Urban councils are relatively healthy gender-wise, while rural Ireland remains populated by male councillors. Following the 2014 local elections, women hold one-third of seats across the Dublin electoral areas. In Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown women took as many as 43 per cent of the seats. But the view was less positive in many rural areas with women winning only two seats on the Monaghan, Carlow, Longford and Offaly County Councils. Given that most TDs ‘cut their teeth’ in local government (77 per cent of new TDs in 2011 were sitting councillors), the lack of women councillors creates difficulties in terms of seeing Dáil increases. My research found that, excluding sitting TDs, around three-quarters of those who looked to run for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Labour in the 2011 general election were local councillors and the vast majority were male. The ‘pipeline’ to the Dáil is mostly men.
The need for political parties to address the urban-rural discrepancies in gender representation was emphasised and some recommendations were made.
Even though the quota law does not apply to local government, parties should aim to build on the female increases seen last May. Co-opting women candidates if vacancies arise is a relatively easy way for parties to give women members a local profile and could be adopted as policy.
As the quota legislation is national and does not insist on 30 per cent female candidates in every constituency, fears were expressed by speakers and audience members that parties will meet the threshold to avoid losing their funding but that they will run women in ‘unwinnable seats’ or pack them into urban centres, leaving many rural constituencies remaining male-dominated. Thus the degree to which the legislation is successful at increasing the number of women TDs right across the country depends on the extent that parties take full advantage of this historic opportunity. Women’s groups should lobby parties to ensure that all ballots are ‘feminised’, not just those in urban areas. On this point, it was suggested that parties establish their own rural development programmes aimed at encouraging more rural women members to run for party positions and elective offices. Sinn Féin to my knowledge already has an initiative along these lines.
The working hours of political life was also seen as an obstacle to women’s representation and should be addressed, especially for rural women TDs with children who have to spend at least three days a week in Dublin. The need for formalised maternity leave, or other arrangements like proxy voting and teleconferencing, for women TDs and Senators who became pregnant while in office was also raised.
Finally, why does women’s underrepresentation in rural Ireland matter? First, women account for over half the population in urban and rural areas, so it is important that any advances in gender representation are equally distributed. Second, the importance of role models for rural women was noted. Studies show how high profile local women act to ‘shake up’ the status quo and encourage other women to take a leap into politics. Third, the more diversity there is in the Dáil and local councils, the better for democracy. This is not to suggest that all female representatives will act in women’s interests by virtue of being women – just like men, party affiliations and constituency considerations will be a priority for most – but that decisions made by a diverse group of people are more-rounded and result in better outcomes in the long-term. As Johnny Fallon said to me after the seminar over coffee, if you were setting up a company you wouldn’t want the board to be comprised entirely of accountants. Why is politics any different?

Quotas a step in closing the gender gap.

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This article by Margaret O Keeffe and Colette Finn was printed in the Evening Echo in Cork on Monday February 2nd 2015.

Political parties are gearing up for the General Election and for the first time they will have to implement gender quota legislation – 30% of party candidates must be female or they will lose half of their state funding. Currently, only one in six of our Dail politicians are female. The old rules basically entrenched a system that favoured those who were well resourced and without care commitments. It further socialised the excluded groups to see their absence as somehow their own fault.
The Oireachtas recognized gender imbalance as being problematic. They had two choices, accept the status quo that the overwhelming majority of Ireland’s elected representatives would be male or implement candidate selection gender quotes to force the political system to include the other fifty percent of the population – namely women. A majority of the mostly male politicians chose the latter.
The arguments that people should be elected on merit, what difference would it make, would that difference be better or worse, a female politician doesn’t necessarily represent ‘women’s’ views no more than a male politician represents ‘men’s’ views – these are all red herrings. In a properly functioning democracy those elected should be reflective of the population that it seeks to represent. Women are half the population and therefore should be half the representation.
The 5050 group was formed in September 2010 in the aftermath of a conference organised by fellow 5050 collaborators Dr Sandra McEvoy and Ms Fiona Buckley in UCC. At that conference Senator Ivana Bacik presented the evidence of how other countries had made significant progress in achieving parliamentary gender balance through the use of quotas. She cited Belgium and Spain.as examples. A group of us decided we were going to take action and lobby for the implementation of candidate selection gender quotas.
Fortuitously for the 5050 group a change of government occurred in March 2011. In July 2012 the Fine Gael/Labour coalition enacted The Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Act 2012. This legislation will penalise all parties in receipt of public funding if they don’t field at least thirty percent of candidates of each sex in the next general election. Within seven years the quota rises to forty percent. With this form of quota all political ideologies are being encouraged/forced to pay attention to the gender balance of the candidates that they select. However this legislation does not apply to local elections.
The parties sought to implement a voluntary 30% gender quota in the local elections of 2014. However, the difficulties of implementing voluntary quotas became apparent – Fianna Fail fielded 17.1% female candidates, Fine Gael fielded 22.6%, Labour’s 28.9%, Sinn Fein 31.6% and People Before Profit did best with almost 40%. Dr Adrian Kavanagh of Maynooth University points out that Fine Gael will have the greatest difficulty in meeting the quota because they have the highest number of incumbent males. Fianna Fail will also struggle but they have fewer incumbent males. However because both parties didn’t implement the voluntary quota in the local elections they do not have the pipeline of experienced women in Local Government or the Senate from which to select suitable candidates.
Clearly, the introduction of the gender quota legislation in 2012 was very welcome. However women (and men) from less well-resourced communities may face similar obstacles in making the transition from small ‘p’ to big ‘P’ politics. The barriers to formal political involvement for women from less resourced backgrounds are complex. It also needs to be clearly said that men from these kinds of backgrounds are also substantially underrepresented in the formal political domain.
Certainly, many women (and men) both young and old make a huge contribution to community wellbeing through their voluntary engagement in schools, youth clubs, sports clubs, churches and so forth. They see and challenge inequality every day. They work hard to improve their own lives as well as those of their friends and neighbours. In this sense, they are politically active, but in the informal (small ‘p’), as opposed to the formal, (big ‘P’) political sphere.
At some stage in our lives, all of us will care or be cared for. Fundamentally, the provision of care is core to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, yet it is often provided on an unpaid basis. In addition, across Irish society, as elsewhere, it is still generally assumed by many people that ‘care’ is a ‘gendered’ activity, i.e. one done predominately by females. In other words, caring is women’s work.
In her article ‘Care-less Politics’ (2014), Mariz Tadros notes that the way politics is ‘done and run’ needs to factor in the ‘costs’ in every sense of unpaid care. Processes of deliberation and decision-making whether they are at the local government or at the national parliamentary level need to be highly sensitised to unpaid care responsibilities and how they impact on everyone’s capacity but particularly women’s capacity to participate in the formal political domain.
Clearly, as with gender quotas, efforts to address unpaid care are not a panacea for narrowing the gender gap in formal political representation. Addressing the issue of unpaid care, however, would help to ensure that more women stay in politics. It would also promote the idea that formal politics can be a viable and normalised career choice for anyone who also has care commitments, regardless of their socio-economic background. Furthermore, in the interests of a more balanced, happier society, ‘care’ should be a shared activity, i.e. one done equally by both men and women.
There is a need to adopt ‘an upside down’ approach to women’s political empowerment. However the academic and policy focus on getting the electoral system right so as to narrow the gender gap in the formal political sphere needs to be complemented with a ‘bottom up’ approach that critically interrogates pathways for less well-resourced women and men in political engagement.
Dr Colette Finn is Chair 5050 Group (Cork) and is a Carer/Economist with an interest in Nonprofit and Public sector businesses.
Dr Margaret O’Keeffe is a member of the 5050 Group (Cork) and is a Carer/Lecturer in Community Development in the Department of Applied Social Studies (CIT).