IRELAND HAS made slow progress in reducing the large gender imbalance in women’s representation in parliament. At the recent general election 15 per cent of the TDs elected were women, which reflects little change over time on a comparative basis. Only 85 of the 566 candidates contesting the election were women and the Labour Party, alone among the parties, had one-third women candidates.
In the international league table ranking women’s parliamentary representation, Ireland lies in 76th place – just ahead of Zimbabwe. In Britain today, more than one in five MPs at Westminster is a woman, while in Sweden women have almost achieved parity of parliamentary representation with men. Clearly, Ireland has some catching up to do.
The new Government has now proposed a degree of coercion to accelerate the pace of change. It proposes a 30 per cent gender quota for the candidates of political parties at general elections. Parties that fail to meet the quota of women candidates will face a 50 per cent reduction in State funding. The total funding of political parties exceeded €13 million last year. Clearly, the threat of financial sanctions will give parties a huge incentive to reach their quota targets.
The introduction of gender-based quotas to help women get elected has become a feature of modern politics: more than 100 countries have introduced such rules. While some of these countries have guaranteed seats in parliament for women, others favour a gender quota system for candidates. Not everyone favours these positive discrimination measures. Some will argue that women have done well without them, and point to Angela Merkel in Germany, Hillary Clinton in the US and to President Mary McAleese and her predecessor, Mary Robinson. Indeed in the last Dáil, a majority of female TDs opposed a quota system for candidate selection. But while the Government, via legislation, will facilitate a greater representation by women in the Dáil, voters will have the final say. They will decide who is elected.
The limited success achieved by parties in securing the election of women candidates to the Dáil has forced a necessary reassessment of the best means of reducing the gender imbalance. In 1918 the election of Constance Markievicz as the first woman MP in the Westminster parliament might have suggested the potential for women to achieve a major breakthrough in female representation in parliament. It proved to be a false dawn. Since then the role and activity of women elected to the Oireachtas has been divided into three distinct phases: Republican women, whose parliamentary entry arose out of the independence struggle; widows who were elected between the 1930s and 1960s; and latterly since the 1970s, the feminist movement, which was boosted by equality legislation introduced following EEC entry in 1973.
The introduction of the gender quota system for the selection of candidates should give a boost to the number of women elected to the Dáil. But, who knows? The voter will decide.