Government ‘reluctant’ to promote equality for women

PRESSURE must be put on the Government to develop an ambitious strategy to tackle “persistent gender inequality” in Ireland, it was claimed yesterday.

Joanna McMinn, director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, told a seminar on women’s humans rights the Government was reluctant to promote equality for women.

Ms McMinn said the Government’s National Women’s Strategy was “very conservative” and showed a resistance to a rights-based approach. Women’s groups want an ambitious strategy on gender equality with a timescale for implementation and specific ways of measuring progress, she said.

“It’s important (the Government) is constantly pushed on a women’s rights-based agenda because it simply isn’t there.”

“We are trying to promote the idea of having some kind of strategic priorities and focusing on them over a three-year period, for example, women indecision-making, economic equality and the areas of care and caring.”

She called for “institutional mechanisms” to monitor and evaluate progress. She also said Government departments should be advised by gender equality experts and that a North-South committee should monitor progress for the whole island.

At the seminar in Dublin, which examined women’s rights 10 years on from the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), activists said Ireland had a weak voice in the international arena where women’s rights were concerned.