Gender quota rule ‘is an insult to men’

October 1984

A decision by the Minister for Education, Niamh Bhreathnach, to legislate for a gender balance on the boards of Regional Technical Colleges has been branded by some members of Co. Wexford VEC as ‘an insult to men’.

Padge Reck, whose position on the board of Carlow RTC would be threatened by the new rule announced this week, described it as ‘a stupid piece of legislation from a woman who has already made a cock-up of education’.

The new provision is for seven of the 15 seats on college boards to be filled by women, a stipulation which would mean that Co. Wexford VEC would probably appoint two women to Waterford and Carlow in future.

‘The remaining 15 men of the Wexford committee would then be totally disenfranchised,’ said Cllr. Reck, who pointed out that there was no question of the chairman, CEO, or secretary, who are all men, being replaced by women as well.

Calling it ‘an insult to the male population’, he said it was only the elected representatives who were coming under fire. He himself had spent a lifetime in the service of vocational education, but now if positions had to be filled by women instead, his only choices could be to ‘wear a tutu or get a sex change,’ he said.

Cllr. Frances Ryan from New Ross said it was heartening to see that women are becoming more involved in public life but she doubted that forcing boards to have a fixed number of women would be fair to anybody involved. ‘They say is topromoteequality,butproperequalitywould be to simply appoint the people most interested and most qualified for the job, no matter whether they were a trousers or a skirt to the meetings,’ she said.

How vocational committees could be forced to appoint women, she didn’t know, and she wouldn’t like to see rows developing between men and women on the VEC.

Pat McGill said he had nothing against women and in fact had lived with seven of them for most of his life, but the new rule would be ‘total discriminations against men’.

Deputy Hugh Byrne said gender balance was ‘a fashionable concept’ but he believed it would be better to appoint people who were best suited to the job, never mind whether they were male or female.

The only one to speak in favour of the new rule was Eoin Minihan of the Progressive Democrats, who said Cllr Reck was wrong in his opinion.

‘We have to take a quantum leap if we are to have equality of the sexes,’ said the New Ross councillor, claiming that it wasn’t all that different from the power sharing proposal in the North twenty years ago.

‘Those in the majority at the time didn’t think it was a good idea in the same way that some men don’t believe that gender balance is a good idea today,’ he said.

‘But if we are to move towards progress, we must make these quantum leaps, even though some of us will suffer in the short-term,’ he added.