State should enforce election gender balance, say Greens

WOMEN must make up 40% of candidates in all future local and general elections to achieve more equality, the Green Party demanded yesterday.

At the moment only 13% of TDs are women, compared to 30% of the European Parliament members, while worldwide our record is worse.

We rank 59 out of 120 nations when it comes to women parliamentary representation and are on a par with the average sub-Saharan African state, according to the Green Party.

Other European countries have boosted the number of women in politics by obliging political parties to run a certain quota of women candidates, Green Party women's affairs spokeswoman Bronwen Maher said.

Political parties here should be forced to have a 40:60 gender balance in their candidates by making half of their State funding dependant on achieving this quota, Ms Maher added.

The Green Party intends to lead the way by insisting on a 50:50 gender balance among their candidates in the next local elections in 2004.

Dáil working practices should also be changed to help women by having a shorter daily session and longer parliamentary sessions, the party said.

The Green Party endorsed these demands at their recent conference in Ennis and also called for the re-establishment of the Oireachtas Women's Affairs Committee.

They also demand gender balance on State boards be a statutory requirement. At the moment only three State boards the Equality Authority, Combat Poverty Agency and the Legal Aid Board have more women than men.

Labour endorsed the call for more women to be attracted into politics. Health spokeswoman Liz McManus said Labour had a deliberate campaign to attract more women candidates.

In 1992 there were no Labour women TDs and today a third of their Dáil deputies are women. "This did not happen by design and it is time that the same effort brought the same results across parties," Deputy McManus said.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fail will host a one-day conference in Dublin aimed at attracting more women into politics for next year's local elections.

The conference will be held in The Citywest Hotel.