There has been much discussion in the Opinion section about so-called gender quotas in politics. One journalist even framed it as the culling of male TDs. Let’s be clear, the new legal requirement for political parties to select 30 per cent female candidates, is exactly that. The people will ultimately decide who their TDs are.
As an accountant I’ll offer a business analogy: all the new law does is increase the number of female candidates “for interview”, who gets the job is exclusively for the people to decide. No individuals will get elected to the next Dáil simply because they are women.
What happened in Dublin Bay North to my colleague Richard Bruton wasn't about women or quotas. The members clearly wanted to run Cllr Naoise Ó Muirí and Minister Bruton. Much has been made of "headquarters" and interference with the "democratic" process. It is important to remember no staff had an input and that the party's elected volunteer executive council set the gender directive for that night; and only paid-up members of two years standing had a vote. If it weren't for the "interference" we'd have had an all-male ticket. Bruton, Ó Muirí and Stephanie Regan will make a fine ticket.
In the seven byelections since the general election in 2011, five out of seven of Fine Gael’s selected candidates have been women. Tellingly in the two byelections that Fine Gael won, Meath East and Longford-Westmeath, both of the candidates were women. None of Fianna Fáil’s candidates and one of Sinn Féin’s candidates have been women in those seven byelections. This, more than anything shows that it is political parties, not the electorate, that need a change of mindset when it comes to women and politics.
When I was elected I became a lonely figure on the political landscape. I was the only woman, from any party or none, to represent Cork North-West since the constituency was created in 1981. The number of women in the Dáil is dreadfully low. After recent byelections we are at 16 per cent now: we lag behind Europe where 27 per cent of parliamentarians are women.
The Government’s plan to slash a political party’s funding if it does not field at least 30 per cent women candidates at the next election will work. The time for nuanced and subtle policy change has passed. In 1973 just 3 per cent of TDs were women, in 2011 it was 15 per cent. At this rate it could take another 40 years for us to reach 50/50 representation. The 30 per cent rule won’t elect women just because they are women. Only the voters can decide who is elected. The 30 per cent rule puts the pressure on political parties to seek out and support women candidates. And it will work. At the last general election 15 per cent of all candidates were women and 15 per cent of the eventual elected TDs were women, a remarkable connection. If this connection continues and political parties abide by the 30 per cent rule we should be on course to see 40 women in the next Dáil. An increase of 25 TDs. This will double the percentage of women in the Dáil and remember that with the number of TDs being cut by eight in the next Dáil, this is especially significant.
We have not been content to wait until the next election to see women in politics increase. A quarter of all Fine Gael councillors are women, the highest percentage of any party, while 50 per cent of our MEPs are women.
Since the last reshuffle nearly a third of the people around the Cabinet table are women, including the AG. This went largely unnoticed but we cannot and should not ignore such an increase of women at Cabinet. To put it into context, of the 183 cabinet ministers to serve the State since its foundation, just 14 were women. The first was Countess Markievicz from 1919 to 1922 and it would be 57 years later when we again heard a woman’s voice at Cabinet. During the 1980s the number of women in Cabinet alternated from zero to one. In 1994 two women joined their male ministerial colleagues and it wasn’t until 1997 that three women walked into the Cabinet room as full ministers. It took nearly 80 years to go from one to three women at Cabinet. This should give you an idea of the importance of having five women around that table now, including the AG. It’s difficult to put into words the difference it makes having one or two women around a table of 15, compared to having five women around a table of 15 but any woman who has served on a board of directors or a sporting, school or voluntary committee will know.
While I am happy to see the Cabinet dramatically increase the number of women taking part and making decisions, the number of women TDs is stubbornly low. The false war about the displacement of male candidates in political parties distracts from the chronic underrepresentation of the majority of Irish citizens. We must never forget that when this initiative is as successful as I believe it will be, 70 per cent of our TDs will be men.
Áine Collins is a Fine Gael TD from Cork North-West