Ireland

The stark gender imbalance in cabinet means many ministers have little direct knowledge of policy issues they are discussing, the Cabinet’s most senior female minister has suggested.

Joan Burton said that when issues such as children, care and “all sorts of struggles”, including the Magdalene Laundries, were discussed, it was “surprising” because “you have a lot of men around the table and they haven’t had much contact with some of these issues”. 

President Michael D Higgins said last night that the low level of women in the political world was of serious concern.

Speaking at an event at Áras an Uachtaráin to mark International Women's Day, he said: "We must do much more to reform our political system to ensure that the boundless talent, intelligence and skills that women bring to the workplace generally can be more profoundly present in our parliament.

Under-representation of women in the Northern Ireland Assembly will be on the agenda during today's debate. Sinn Fein wants a working group set up to address the issue as well as the broader impact of women`s marginalisation within politics.
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Under-representation of women in the Northern Ireland Assembly will be on the agenda during today’s debate. Sinn Féin wants a working group set up to address the issue as well as the broader impact of women’s marginalisation within politics.
For more information, please visit Ireland Online's Website.

Having more women in politics should be more than an aspiration – their presence must be backed up by law, a Dáil sub-committee was told yesterday. Former Fine Gael minister for education Gemma Hussey told the Dáil sub-committee on Women’s Participation in Politics she was “not starry-eyed” about voluntary quotas for women.
To read the full article, please visit the Irish Times Website.

Women from all the main parties are set to join forces next week - to demand an increase in females in the next Assembly. Yet only one in six candidates fighting it out for the 108 seats are women - a marginal drop compared to the last Stormont election. Women now represent a slight majority in the province (51%) even before the next census figures are revealed.

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Political parties are going to have to start choosing a lot more female candidates if they want to retain the current €14m a year subsidy from the taxpayer. In what was described by one senior source as "a radical step", the Cabinet has approved a proposal to cut taxpayers' funding for political parties by 50 per cent if they fail to select a sufficient number of female candidates for national elections. The abysmally low level of representation for women in national politics has been an ongoing source of embarrassment for the political system.