COUNTY Enterprise Boards and Leader boards should have more women on them, according to the president of the Irish Countrywomen's Association.
Ms Bridin Twist was addressing the annual general meeting of the association in Athlone yesterday. "All agencies responsible for rural development in particular must include women in drawing up plans and in implementing them", she said. A commitment to do this had been "blatantly ignored" in the case of County Enterprise Boards band Leader boards.
She also said that EU funding for projects such as the Leader programme was too low for anything other than a "cosmetic surgery" approach to the crisis of depopulation in rural Ireland.
Rural Ireland is not just struggling for survival, but is in its death throes", she said, the closure of rural schools and post offices and the new rural policing policy had contributed to this.
Regeneration could be brought about through the development of agri tourism, recreation and leisure pursuits, which had traditionally involved women.
The skills and experience which women had acquired, often through their work in the ICA, should be harnessed and used to provide greater independence for women and improve the economy. In particular, women setting up small businesses should have access to credit independently of the status of their husbands.
She said that recent figures from the Central Statistics Office had shown that, although women did 27.5 per cent of the work on farms, less than 10 per cent of farmers were women. This was another example of how the contribution of women to the economy was being underestimated.
Ms Twist called for the abolition of the status of "dependant", which she described as "an outmoded concept which defines women as dependents for social welfare entitlements on the status of their husbands".
Earlier the ICA agreed to step up its campaign for a breast cancer screening programme. Ms Twist said that, despite the official launch of such a programme, by the Department of Health last October, nothing had been done.
She also said that the association would be conducting a national education programme on osteoporosis.