Tag Archives: india

7 days to Gender Quota Bill Introduction into Seanad

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Today’s News:

(1) Financial Times published a fine article “Female politicians point the way towards equality” by Rebecca Knight. Well worth reading because it’s full of reference to research evidence from India & information on the introduction of quotas in Mauritius, Lybia, Tunisia & Rwanda.  Strangely no mention of Ireland – probably because we haven’t yet introduced candidate selection quotas.

Concerning politics, the “Quota Project” and UK & US figures for % of female elected politicians are included.

As you’d expect, the FT broadened the discussion to the position of women in business – quoting research from  University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Harvard Business School & University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Susan Knight, FT, began:
“As debate rages over the use of gender quotas in the boardroom, an increasing number of countries are introducing them to further women’s representation in the political domain….”  Be sure to read the rest.

(2) Google Alert for “gender quotas” picked up a thought-provoking blogpost from “datbeardyman” Paul Bowler @datbeardyman – several comments there too.

(3) Valerie Keller, Founder & CEO, Veritas, heading to Davos, has a fine personal account of commitments to gender equality in corporate boardrooms in Huffington Post.  Not at all political – but the points she makes may help us think about the legacy women face & carry into the political arena.

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What the anti-quotas lobby deny

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I came across this piece from the autobiography of Jawarlal Nehru:

For many generations the British treated India as a kind of enormous country house (after the old English fashion) that they owned. They were the gentry owning the house and occupying the desirable parts of it, while the Indians were consigned to the servants hall and pantry and kitchen…

The fact that the British Government should have imposed this arrangement upon us was not surprising; but what does seem surprising, is that we, or most of us, accepted it as the natural and inevitable ordering of our lives and destiny. We developed the mentality of a good country-house servant. Sometimes we were treated to a rare honour – we were given a cup of tea in the drawing-room. The height of our ambition was to become respectable and to be promoted individually to the upper regions. Greater than any victory of arms or diplomacy was this psychological triumph of the British in India. The slave began to think as a slave, as the wise men of old had said.

Edited version for 50:50 group

Replace Men for British and Women for Indians.

What the anti quotas lobby deny is that women were discriminated against in the past and it is continuing today with the under-representation of women in our political system. We are not even getting on the ballot paper.

Women do not face a level playing field when it comes to participating in the political system. Childcare is still seen a the predominent domain of women and very good we are at it too – but that shouldn’t prevent us from taking our rightful place at the decision making table. If politics matters then it matters that women as a group are not represented in sufficient numbers.

Full equality for women has not been obtained when our Dail is not reflective of the gender balance 50 50.