PARTIES BARELY MEET THE FEMALE QUOTA FOR DÁIL AS TWO MINISTERS LOSE THEIR POSITIONS
THESE are the four women in the current 15-member Cabinet, but two of them lost their Dáil seats at the election.
The 27% female representation is made up of Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, who retained her seat as a Fine Gael TD for CavanMonaghan; Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht; Fine Gael TD Josepha Madigan, who represents Dublin Rathdown; Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone, who lost her seat as an Independent in Dublin South West after one term; and Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Regina Doherty, who also lost her Fine Gael seat in Meath East.
If female representation in the Cabinet is to improve, more women are going to need to be elected to Dáil Éireann. Under the current legislation the minimum percentage of female candidates increases to 40% in the next election, should it occur in 2023.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would need a third more female candidates than last time out.
In an indication of the difficulty the current gender quota of 30% poses, Fianna Fáil (31%), Fine Gael (30.5%), and Sinn Féin (33%), barely reached it. Labour, with 32%, also just managed to meet it. In total 162 female candidates ran in 2020, just two more than ran in 2016.
Meeting the new gender quota means Fine Gael, if it runs the same number of candidates, will have to increase the number of female
candidates from 25 to 33.
Fianna Fáil, with 26 female candidates in 2020 will have to increase its number of female candidates to 34.
The two big parties would also have to replace eight male candidates from their current roster with female candidates to fulfil the new quota.
The difficulties faced by Labour and Sinn Féin are somewhat less, with both having to find three extra female candidates and drop three males respectively to meet the new quota.
However, if Sinn Féin is to challenge the big two on a nationwide basis, it will have to recruit up to 30 female candidates.
The Greens, at 39% are close to the new cut-off point, while the best performers of all are the Social Democrats, whose slate of candidates was 57% female.
One Soc Dem noted: ‘We might struggle to run enough men and fall foul of that element of the gender quota legislation.
‘People forget that the 40% threshold applies to both genders. Men have rights too.’
In a significant incentive, parties who fail to meet the quota stand to lose 50% of state funding, which on the most recent 2018 figures amounted to just under €6m.
Commenting on the figures, Orla O’Connor of the National Women’s Council warned that parties, if they are to meet this challenge, ‘will have to engage in a sea change in culture, they need to be taking measures voluntarily to create a culture where female participation thrives’.
Ms O’Connor called on parties to ‘target women for winnable seats’.
The parties have a stay of execution until 2023 under the current legislation.