Humiliation across Europe

IRISH women are among the most disadvantaged in Europe with low pay, fewer opportunities for career advancement, poor child care facilities, greater risk of poverty and less than 13% representation in the Dáil.

The country was humiliated recently for its attitude to women, when the Council of Europe withdrew voting rights because of Ireland's all-male delegation.

The statistics show just 22 of the 166 Dáil deputies are women, one of the lowest proportions in the EU and a dismal 58th in a list of 122 countries of the world. The world average is 15%.

However, to have female representatives you need to select them to contest elections. Only 18% of candidates in the last general election were women, there were no female candidates in ten constituencies and no female TDs elected in 16 constituencies.

Women fare little better in the local authorities where they account for just 15% of councillors, whereas in the European Parliament they hold five of the 15 seats.

Elections to both the local councils and the European Parliament come up this June and the parties are busy selecting their candidates.Despite pressure from the International Parliamentary Union and groups like the National Women's Council, the main parties say we don't have democracy when the voice of the majority of the population is not properly represented.

"Democracy needs the different voices and, when 51% of the population is not represented, it's not a representative democracy", said Sonia Palmieri of the IPU.

Irish political parties say they have a problem getting women to go forward in elections, but they tend to see this as a problem for women rather than for democracy.

The IPU favours positive discrimination that includes a quota of seats reserved for women in parliaments, on committees and executives. All parties say their policy is to encourage women to go forward for election, but all have problems getting women to run for the upcoming local elections.

Fianna Fáil with just seven of its 88 deputies being female (9%) does not favour a quota system.

Fine Gael, with just two of its 31 deputies female (6%), also operates on the basis of targets rather than quota. They will not reach the 35% women candidates they had hoped for in councils, but hope a quarter of their candidates in the local elections will be female.

The Progressive Democrats, despite half its TD's being female has less than 20% female candidates for the local elections. They don't agree with a quota system.

None of Sinn Féin's five TD's are women, but 80% of their members elected to the Northern Ireland assembly are. They do not have a quota system for local or national elections.

A third of Labour Party TD's seven are women. The party has abandoned their quota system for candidates but have just put in place a quota system for their executive of 15 where five seats must go to men and five to women.

Quotas and reserved seat systems are becoming a fact of life in many countries with half of the 38 where elections were held last year having some positive action to improve women's participation.

Researchers say countries need to have at least 30% women elected for women to have an impact on parliament. So far this year only 14 countries in the world that have reached this critical percentage.

Shannon O'Connell, the Programme Director for the National Democratic Institute in the US at a seminar in Belfast had advice for women interested in politics: "Politics is about power. Power is something that is almost always taken, and never given. Women are challengers in almost every political system, and therefore will confront significant obstacles in almost every political system."

Overcoming these obstacles poses the classical problem of the chicken and egg and which comes first, said Ms Palmieri.

The way politics is conducted in most countries does not attract women and discriminates against them. "They are up against a masculine party culture", she said, and it won't change until there are sufficient women involved at levels of real power.