Gender quotas get legal backing in Ireland

By Mark Pack | Tue 24th July 2012 - 8:50 am

Interesting news from Ireland on the long-running question of male dominance of elected Parliamentary posts:

GENDER QUOTAS are set to become law after the Electoral Amendment (Political Funding) Bill 2011 passed all stages in the Dáil yesterday.

The legislation, which has yet to be signed by the President, will halve State funding to parties unless 30 per cent of their candidates at the next general election are women. This figure will rise to 40 per cent at subsequent general elections…

The lobby group Women for Election also welcomed the development, but said the legislation would not be enough to encourage more women into politics.

Co-founder Niamh Gallagher said other “proactive” measures, such as mentoring and training, were necessary to encourage more women to run for office.

The legislation has proved contentious in the past, with a small number of Government backbenchers speaking out against it. [Irish Times]

* Mark Pack is a member of the Federal Board and editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.

5 Comments

Stephen W 24th Jul '12 - 11:49am

I think the 30% threshold for candidates is reasonable.

40% seems too high though, there is a point beyond which you are prioritising artificial statistical balance over picking the best candidates. A healthy society should accept that there will be natural imbalances in gender numbers in different professions due to random variation.
Simon McGrath 24th Jul '12 - 9:52pm

I remember the days when Lib Dems were against sex discrimination. Indeed we though it so important we put it in our constitution
“we reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation”
Donnacha Maguire 25th Jul '12 - 9:07am

While this Bill was passed , it doesn’t have universal support. Many feel that it is merely a plaster over a wound and won’t deal with the fundamental reasons why women don’t get involved or stay involved in the political process.
Simon Banks 25th Jul '12 - 9:31am

It is possible to be against quotas and against discrimination! In the case of employment or admission to a course, it’s possible to use statistics as evidence, but there may be good reason why a particular group is underrepresented. For example, if you look at the armed forces and ethnicity, some ethnic groups may have a strong military tradition and others an anti-military tradition. It may be for whatever reason that more women choose to go for medical courses than accountancy.

Random variation in a large number of candidates shouldn’t produce a more than 3-2 imbalance very often!

Quotas tend to be unpopular precisely because you’ll always be able to find instances of a better candidate (by any measurable criterion) being rejected because of the quota and this offends people’s sense of fairness. “People” here often includes those gaining from the quotas, as candidates want to feel they succeeded because of their merits alone. Quotas may also ignore factors like those above that cause imbalance without discrimination.

I see quotas as a last resort after other methods have failed. There might be a strong case for them in parliamentary candidature since the imbalance in gender and ethnicity is so great and resilient, but have we really tried the other methods fully?

I do like the Irish solution of looking at total party candidate numbers and giving the party the responsibility for finding solutions that produce a reasonable balance. At party level that could comprise outreach, training, publicity and so on rather than quotas or reserved seats.
CP 25th Jul '12 - 7:59pm

Its good to see how different areas are taking action to increase gender balance.

As this is a quota for candidates, the effect on overall elected representatives is not certain, however it will certainly galvanise parties’ efforts to overcome the extra barriers that women face.