Both FF and FG are struggling to meet new gender quotas for 2024 local polls
The parties scraped over limit last time... but problems persist
THE main political parties are facing a big battle to find women candidates to fulfil the 40% gender quota for the general election in 2025, new figures reveal.
As the parties start to gear up for next year’s local elections, all the indications are that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will struggle to hit the 2020 figure of 30% let alone the more ambitious 40% mark.
Under the Electoral Act 2012, the 2025 election will see the quota move from 30% to 40% next time around.
If the quota is not met, parties will lose 50% of the State funding they receive annually to run their operations.
At the moment, Ireland is 98th in the world for women’s representation in a national parliament, falling behind countries like China and Iraq.
The ‘warm up’ to the general election are next year’s local elections to be held in May or June and the signs are already that any move towards the 40% mark will be very difficult for the two ‘Civil War’ parties.
A Fianna Fáil source admitted to the MoS this weekend it was well below the quota.
‘Our candidate selections are an ongoing process. The number of female candidates selected to date stands at approximately 23%,’ he said.
A Fine Gael spokesperson told the MoS this weekend the party now has 136 candidates of which 42 or just 31% are women.
The Labour Party have selected 20 candidates for the local elections so far, 11 of whom are women and a spokesperson for the Green Party told the MoS that the gender balance of its local election candidates is exactly 50-50 between men and women.
According to an ongoing tally of candidates being compiled by Maynooth University lecturer and election expert Adrian Kavanagh, to date just 36.1% of candidates for the local elections are women with 178 of 493 declared/selected candidates being female.
He estimates that Sinn Féin are close to parity with 28 of its 58 candidates [48.3%] female.
The Social Democrats are the best performers with 13 females out of 20 candidates (61.9%).
Gender quotas do not apply to local elections, but they are seen as representing an important ‘finishing course’ for the selection of Dáil candidates.
The struggles of the ‘big’ parties represents a reprise of the 2020 election where at 30.5%, Fine Gael just scraped over the quota. Fianna Fáil came in at 31% and Sinn Féin 33%.
Labour had 32%, People Before
Profit were at 38% and the Green Party were 41%. By contrast ,the Social Democrats slate had 57% of women on the ticket.
The number of women elected rose from 16% in 2011 to 22% in 2016. However, in an indication that the political classes needed further encouragement, progress stalled in 2020 with women’s representation in the Dáil rising just half a percentage point to 22.5%. Commenting on the issue, chairperson of the Oireachtas media committee, Niamh Smyth TD said: ‘This is not about numbers or box-ticking, it is about creating a political system that understands the issues and needs of all of our society and in that regard women undeniably do make up 51% of the population.’ Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been warned by internal figures that the age of ‘token’ female candidates are over. Deputy Smyth said ‘There can be no going back to the situation where women are token candidates. Nobody wants to be the token candidate and female candidates won’t accept that any-more.’ Minister of State and Fine Gael TD Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told the MoS that quotas were needed ‘because they force parties to make the extra effort to engage women and encourage them to run’.
She said: ‘This time five years ago I had never considered running for election. Honestly. I wouldn’t have run without someone leaning in and asking. That was without quotas for the local election. But still, the drive to recruit women has had to be grounded in quotas for the general election and that has impacted the approach to the local elections also. We are in a period of renewal in Fine Gael and to my mind it is an opportunity to give a platform to a whole range of excellent new candidates including many new women who have the opportunity to represent their community.’
‘Women aren’t inclined to put themselves forward in the same way, so it is necessary.’
One putative Fine Gael election candidate, Dún Laoghaire councillor Lorraine Hall noted: ‘This is not about numbers. It is very important that Fine Gael are seen to be attuned to issues that matter to women. The best way to achieve that is to select women, obviously.
‘It’s about ensuring that a party reflects the people they represent. Parties need to be more attuned to the issues that impact on women. These are more often quality of life issues, childcare, home care, issues that traditionally land on women.’
Sinn Féin are confident they can meet the quota. One source said: ‘Have a look at the front bench, we are on course to be the first party with a majority female Cabinet.’
Fianna Fáil by contrast are struggling with just five female TDs with one senior party figure warning: ‘There are still a lot of invisible barriers. A lot of people have not evolved beyond the concept of women being there to be decorously necklaced around the leader during photo shoots.’
Some of Fianna Fáil’s dilemmas will be resolved by a powerful slate of female Seanad candidates such as Lorraine Clifford-Lee, Erin
‘Nobody wants to be the token candidate’
‘We have encouraged women to join’
McGreehan, Fiona O’Loughlin and Catherine Ardagh.
A Fianna Fáil source noted: ‘There are no tokens there. National politicians like Lorraine Clifford-Lee and Erin McGreenan are all knowledgeable politicians who are well capable of ministerial office let alone being TDs.’
Senator Mary Fitzpatrick is also expected to run in Dublin Central whilst consideration is being given to running former minister and current councillor Mary Hanafin in Dublin Rathdown.
One optimistic Fianna Fáil source said: ‘Mary has the perfect persona for that constituency. She was Cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire last year, did a great job, all the old dears with pearl necklaces loved her.’
Despite their current difficulties, Fine Gael were upbeat, with one source noting: ‘If we run Kate and Emma Blain in Dublin Bay South, Mary Seery Kearney on her own in Dublin South-Central, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and Lorraine Hall in Dún Laoghaire, Regina Doherty in Fingal, Sinéad Sheppard in Cork East and Helen McEntee and Sharon Tolan we are off to a good start.’
One senior source noted: ‘We are also very hopeful that substantive figures like Ellen O’Malley-Dunlop can build on her impressive performance in 2020.’
A spokesperson for the lobby group, See Her Elected, which aims to boost women’s participation in politics warned against drafting in
women as token candidates.
They said: ‘See Her Elected have always been alert to the problem of women being added to a ticket as a token candidate. That it happens was confirmed in a research report commissioned by the National Women’s Council in 2019, following the last local elections in 2019.
‘Our comprehensive training
programme is designed to confront this practice on a number of fronts.
‘We encourage women to make sure that the party understands that they are an asset to the party and not the other way around. We help them prepare their questions for a party asking them to be a candidate so they can make their own mind
up about whether the party is serious about supporting them through selection convention and with resources, financial and people, for the campaign.
‘We have encouraged women to join political parties, and join them in time to have a vote at a selection convention. It is important that local party members see women as active party members
and integral to the success of the party at election time. We place a strong focus on selection conventions and run boot camps to coach women in how to approach what is in effect their first election so they are prepared.’