Author Archives: Claire

How much do Irish parties spend on promoting women?

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Claire McGing, Government of Ireland IRCHSS scholar and John and Pat Hume scholar, NUI Maynooth
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In May 2011, Phil Hogan, Minister for the Environment, Community & Local Government, announced his intention to introduce legislation whereby political parties must ensure that 30% of their general election candidates are women and 30% are men.

The proposed sanction for non-compliance is very strict: parties face losing 50% of their annual funding from the state if they fail to meet the quota requirement. The proposed legislation is due to come into effect at the next general election. 

Objectors
Objectors question why a quota must come through the law, as opposed to parties individually taking it upon themselves to balance their tickets by gender.

With the exception of the Progressive Democrats, all mainstream Irish political parties have already introduced some type of internal candidate gender quota or targets for elections since the 2000s, and some much earlier than this period.

In the absence of strict enforcement procedures, however, the targeted percentage of women candidates and/or representatives is rarely reached (if ever).

While the Scandinavian experience shows that voluntary quotas can be very successful in increasing female parliamentary representation, change does not occur in a vacuum. The success of voluntary gender balancing is highly dependent on the context in which it is introduced, requiring a high level of commitment to change by party elites and members, the type of electoral system in place (the literature shows that, with large constituencies and a mechanism to allow candidates to be ‘zipped’ by gender, list PR is the most ‘women-friendly’ system), and an egalitarian culture in which gender equality is placed high on the agenda.

Voluntary mechanisms have been tried & tested by Irish parties…
usually to disappointing results. This is largely due to the fact that parties allocate very little funding into methods for promoting women’s participation as activists and candidates.

Under Section 18 of the Electoral Act, 1997, parties in receipt of funding from the Exchequer are required to ‘include provision in respect of expenditure by the party in relation to the promotion of women and young persons in political activity’.

Expenditure for all given purposes must be declared at the end of each year and this data is freely available from the Standards in Public Office Commission

Between 2002-2010, parties with Dáil representation received €45.1m in funding from the taxpayer under the Electoral Act.

Just 2% (€860, 366) of this was spent on encouraging the participation of women.With a figure of 3% (€1.4 million), a slightly higher financial priority is given to promoting young people in parties, but it is still worryingly low.

Party expenditure on promoting the participation of women, 2002-2010, as required by the 1997 Electoral Act
Although no party has exceeded allocating 10% of their funding to this purpose, Sinn Féin and Labour have spent the most in relative terms.

This is unsurprising as international literature shows that parties on the left & left-of-centre tend to give more priority to political gender issues than parties elsewhere on the spectrum.

The Progressive Democrats never declared any expenditure on women. As the two largest parties at the time, the figures for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are very poor.

Peaks emerge for both between 2003-4, mainly due to the fact both undertook reports on women’s involvement in the party and concluded with a number of targets for future elections.

Unfortunately, funding was not retained at this level. Fine Gael progressively spent less annually, while Fianna Fáil spent nothing on promoting females between 2005-7 – despite the lead up to the general election.

While spending reached a peak for Sinn Féin and Labour for the 2009 local elections, Fine Gael spent just 0.1% that year. Fianna Fáil slightly increased their expenditure in 2008 to 0.7%.

Conclusion
 These figures show why the ‘soft’ approach to bringing more women into politics has failed. Despite setting themselves ambitious targets, parties showed little impetus for taking the steps needed to meet them.

Promoting women’s political participation requires a diverse range of methods and requires adequate funding to be put in place.

By potentially facing significant financial losses, a legislative gender quota will ensure that parties are finally given the ‘push’ they need to encourage then to implement a credible gender strategy. As it is parties are not living up to their side of the deal.

 

Guest Post: Reform Galore – How are the Parties proposing to achieve Gender Balance?

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By Claire McGing (Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) scholar, NUI Maynooth)

On behalf of Claiming our Future (http://www.claimingourfuture.ie/)
 
The same figures are thrown around again and again. Women have held only 5% of Dáil seats since the foundation of the state. 23 women sat in the 30th Dáil, amounting to a figure of 13.8% and placed us in a global position of 84th in terms of female parliamentary representation, alongside Cameroon (IPU, 2011). At the current rate of (or lack of) progress, it will take approximately 370 years before we achieve a 50:50 gender balance in parliament. We’ve heard it all before.
 
Some newer figures that you might not have heard of: only 15.2% of candidates (a pathetic 86 out of 566) running this Friday are female. While numerically this is an increase of 4 on the 2007 figure, it actually represents a percentage decrease of -2.2%. Percentage wise, there are fewer women running in 2011 than there was in the last four general elections. While all constituencies have at least 5 male candidates, voters in four constituencies will have no women on their ballot papers at all. The average number of male candidates per constituency is 11. For women it is only 2. Looking at the parties themselves, 14.7% of Fianna Fáil candidates are female (+1.6% from 2007), with a figure of 15.4% emerging for Fine Gael candidates (-1.1%). Labour is running 26.5% women (+4.5%), the Greens 18.6% (-6.4%) and Sinn Féin 19.5% (-4.9%). There are no women running for any of these parties in nine constituencies (21% of total). In the Independents/Others category, women make up 10.6% of candidates (-2.2%).
 
We are well aware as to why female political participation is so low because we have had no shortage of perfectly adequate reports published on it, along with a growing body of academic research. The ‘five C’s’ or challenges that women face in their pursuit for political office (as originally noted by the Oireachtas sub-committee on Women’s Participation in Politics, 2009) have been discussed at length. Childcare responsibilities are still disproportionably placed on Irish women. They have less cash than men. They are less confident about seeking a nomination to run because they lack visible role models and because they feel alienated by the highly masculine culture of politics. Women often find it more difficult to come through the candidate selection process as a result of these other challenges. These are facts and backed up by realms of research, in both an Irish and international setting.
 
Given the depressing lack of women being put forward yet again, how are the various political parties proposing to achieve a better balance between the genders in future elections? Encouragingly, all the main political parties have set out some kind of proposal in their manifestos and/or political reform documents as to how they would deal with the issue. We are at least seeing evidence of a process of equality rhetoric – a public acceptance that the lack of women in decision-making is a problem that needs to be addressed (Lovenduski, 2005).
 
While Labour, the Greens and Sinn Féin are all proposing mandatory electoral gender quotas which would oblige parties to put forward a certain percentage of female candidates (both Labour and the Greens tie this requirement to public funding), Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are much vaguer in their solutions. In conjunction with the use of a mixed-member proportional electoral system, Fianna Fáil would introduce measures to “favour gender balance within the national list”. What does this entail? Although unclear, their proposal most likely relates to the use of a ‘placement mandate’ provision. These are provisions requiring that a certain percentage of women are placed in certain positions on a party list. For example, every second candidate might be a woman. The party almost certain to lead the next government, Fine Gael, are proposing to give the issue to a Citizen’s Assembly, “to make recommendations as to how the number of women in politics can be increased”.
 
We need strong action now if we want to see a better gender balance in the future. While other democracies introduce reform measures to better facilitate the participation of women, Ireland is still thinking and talking about it. Claiming our Future are calling on the parties which form the new Government to include in their Programme for Government a commitment to increase the proportion of women in politics. This should, at a minimum, include new legislation so that full public funding under the Electoral Acts is only available to parties which select no more than two-thirds of their candidates from one gender.
 
Claiming our Future have set up an online petition. Be sure to sign it if you feel strongly about this and want to see a ballot paper that better reflects society in the 2016 general election.