LW welcomes gender legislation
14 December 2011
Labour Women welcomes the introduction of the Electoral Amendment Political Funding Bill which will halve the funding to political parties if they fail to run minimum of 30% candidates of either gender.
"This legislation will address the gender imbalance which has been so persistent in Irish politics. While it will probably take a couple of electoral cycles before the much improved outcomes will be seen, by then we should have a situation where women candidates are firmly part and parcel of how the political parties do business", comments Katherine Dunne Labour Women Chair.
'"This measure will increase the choice of voters who have been deprived of the option of voting for a woman candidate from the major parties. 21 constituencies have no woman TD now and men still hold 85% of all the seats in Dáil Éireann. It has been estimated that it will take over 300 years to end this vast over-representation of men without a kick-starting measure such as this one.
"Currently 6 countries in the EU have this type of legislation. Once this legislation is passed in Ireland, this figure will rise to 7 countries of out 27. Of the remaining 20 EU countries a number such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland or Germany do not require any similar measures as they already have a high number of women in their national parliaments as decision-makers. For the bottom performers such as Malta, Hungary, Cyprus or Romania some measures such as this would be useful.
"Labour Women is particularly pleased that all parties appear to support this measure. While we do know that some people have reservations about this piece of legislation, the time to debate has passed and we now have to move to a place where we simply get on with it. A positive attitude will be much more helpful. We should all embrace this measure and consider it the progressive measure that it is."
