THE MOST effective strategy to increase women’s participation in politics is to introduce gender quotas, a Dáil committee was told yesterday.
Prof Yvonne Galligan of Queen’s University Belfast told the Oireachtas Sub-Committee on Women’s Participation in Politics that it was incumbent on parties in a democratic society to provide voters with choices that reflect the gender diversity of the public. “This will not come about of its own accord, as women’s representation has remained stagnant since 1992,” she said.
The committee was set up to examine the challenges facing women entering politics and make recommendations, particularly on whether or not positive discrimination should be adopted in Ireland.
Prof Galligan, director of the Centre for the Advancement of Women in Politics at Queen’s, said providing opportunities for women called for carefully crafted affirmative action to combat “entrenched privilege”: “Quotas are a means to achieving that end.”
Gender quotas could be found in more than 100 countries, either introduced voluntarily or through legislation.
Prof Galligan did not say whether legislative quotas would be better than voluntary quotas, but she did say voluntary quotas led to a slower increase in women’s participation, and the enactment of legislative quotas “had made a difference”. She also outlined some of the difficulties facing women at local party level.
Many women felt uncomfortable in the male-dominated culture of their parties, she said. They may be actively discouraged from taking on leadership roles, their contributions to debates may be devalued and they may not be given the space to speak.
If they attend meetings alone, their motivation may be commented on. Some women had been asked who would mind their children while they ran for office.
Prof Galligan said she was not pointing the finger at any party in particular, but the issues needed to be addressed across the board.
Fianna Fáil Senator Lisa MacDonald, who has a 10-week-old baby, said if a woman has a child in Leinster House she is perceived as weak and not having time for her profession. She also said party mentors needed to be mentored themselves on how to help women, because they were not used to dealing with women. The “rules” were written by men, but women did not work in the same “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” way, she said.
The committee is to report by the end of October.
