Chelsea Clinton tells UCD gender quotas yet to pay off

Chelsea Clinton has said gender quotas on corporate boards has not yet translated into greater representation of women in management roles.

Ms Clinton, speaking with an audience of female students at University College Dublin as part of the Clinton Foundation's No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, said the issue should receive attention.

She said Scandinavian studies had examined the impact of board-level quotas, which were the only corporate quotas any countries had mandated.

“That hasn’t yet translated into any greater management participation by women,” she said.

Not enough data was available at present to have an informed conversation about the matter, she said, adding: “But I think we will at some point, and I think it’s something that we all should pay attention to.

“If it’s something that you think would be the right answer for Ireland, it’s something that I then urge you to try.”

Politics Referring to gender quotas in politics, she said it was a conversation

each country should be having.

“In Ireland, you’re much further along for even having this conversation – and certainly even having made the decision – than most of the world,” she said, referring to a quota law that will halve State funding to parties unless 30 per cent of candidates are women at the next General Election.

Ms Clinton said quotas were “treated with great anathema” in the United States. “It would not be the right conversation for us to have,” she said.

However, progress was being seen in the provision of child support credits, for example. “We know incontrovertibly that who is in a national parliament matters. And we know incontrovertibly that when at least a third of the parliament is comprised of women that we see very different budget allocations,” she said.

Budgets

Greater percentages of budgets tended to be invested in health and education, and Government programmes tended to have longer “time horizons”, she said.