‘It’s not just about women’s issues’

WHEN the first local elections took place in Ireland in 1899, one newspaper ran a front page story reporting “loud laughter” at the announcement that the ballot would give women the right to vote for the first time in this country.

More than 110 years on, making up just a fifth of local representatives, there are female councillors who will tell you that some things never change.

While females have always been allowed to vote in local elections here, the councils remains almost as male dominated today as they did when the provision for women in the 1898 Local Government Act “raised hilarity and heckles”.

In the campaign for next month’s local elections parties are emphasising how progressive they are, pointing to the number of female candidates they are putting forward for election.

But if the number of candidates is anything to go by it looks like the level of female participation in local authorities for the next five years is going to be lower than it has been since 2004.

Figures show less than 400 female candidates are running for political parties, and when independents are taken into account will make up less than a fifth of all candidates.

Fine Gael is running 176 females out of 780 candidates. Party leader Enda Kenny, said: “We do not do so on the basis of token representation. These are women who are standing for the party because they want to serve with the party, they want to be elected and they are capable of being elected and re-elected in many cases.”

Despite just a quarter of the party’s candidates being female, Mr Kenny said: “We are very happy with the progress being made here. Obviously you would prefer to have a 50-50 balance in terms of people standing for and being elected to councils and the Dáil. But this is progress from our point of view.”

Fianna Fáil announced late last summer that it would be embarking on a speed-dating style selection process by sending a team around the country to interview potential candidates who would be “young people and females in particular,” according to Taoiseach Brian Cowen when announcing the plan.

In its Gender Equality Audit, published in 2004, the party set a target to have 30% of its local council representation female by 2010. But the number of candidates it’s running is less than that at 26%, according to figures compiled this week by the National Women’s Council (NWCI).

This means the two main parties have a lower level of female candidates than smaller parties such as the Greens with 29% and Sinn Féin at 28%.

Director of the NWCI Susan McKay said her organisation is concerned about the “ongoing exclusion of women from key political decision-making structures at local, national and international levels”.

She said: “The numbers of women going forward for election next month have not changed much since the elections of 2004, with all political parties putting forward less than 30% of female candidates for the local elections.”

LABOUR has often prided itself on the high level of female participation in its party and is putting forward 62 women out of 206 candidates – making up about a third of its representation.

Among these is Maria Parodi, 25, contesting a seat for the first time in Dublin City Council. This is where women meet most barriers to entering politics, according to the more senior female politicians.

“You meet a male network at the early stages and you have to work through that,” said Nessa Childers, who is running for Labour in the European elections, but who previously resigned her seat on Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown county council, when she was in the Green Party, because of the difficulties in holding the seat while also caring for her family and holding down a full-time job.

Ms Parodi said she worked her way into politics by first being involved in local issues such as the Ringsend Incinerator. But she finds the lack of women at all levels of politics, frustrating.

Last week while canvassing in the South East Inner City of Dublin, she came across a voter who was 24 and had cervical cancer. Free cervical cancer screening is only available to women over 25 and the vaccine against the disease did not go ahead because of budget cutbacks.

“This is an example of how there is such thing as women’s issues in politics,” she said. “But what people need to understand is they are not just women’s issues, they are also men’s issues because this affects fathers and brothers of cancer victims as well.”

Up against her in Dublin’s South inner city is Sarah Ryan who was co-opted onto the council last year for Fianna Fáil at the age of 24. Being more often described as “the daughter of” MEP Eoin Ryan, she is aware that women sometimes have to make an extra effort to prove themselves.

“I think it’s a bit of a novelty when you are quite young and join the council as a woman. But generally I wouldn’t say I was treated any differently. There are a good few women on Dublin City Council so I wouldn’t say it’s an old boys’ club,” said Cllr Ryan.

“Childcare and education are big issues for me and they are issues I’m very familiar with because they affect a lot of my friends and people my age living in the area,” she said.

Suzanne Jamal is running for Fine Gael in Meath County Council where she says childcare is one of the biggest issues raised by voters: “In Meath County Council we only have three women out of 24, so I think it is time to bring women in to balance things out and to have a woman’s view on things,” she said.

Suzanne was a councillor in Co Monaghan in the ’90s but had to move home for family reasons and her husband’s job.

She believes the reason women are slow to get involved in politics is because they are so busy, but that is changing with men taking greater responsibility for unpaid work in the home.

Mary O’Shea has been a Dublin City councillor since 2007 and is hoping to retain her seat. She admits she is “disappointed” her party, Fine Gael, does not have more female candidates.

“I started off on the premise that women can do anything they want and it’s their own fault if they don’t get involved. But the more I’ve got involved in it the more I see what the pitfalls are. You see very young women involved and then they have careers, family or whatever, and it is then when they get older that they have the time or the interest to get back in again. There are childcare issues and I do think they affect women more, I don’t particularly like saying that, but it is true,” she said.

She believes councils could work better with more female representation:

But the wide gap in gender representation on local councils matters because local government is seen as a route to national politics.

The pattern of next month’ s local elections is likely to be repeated in the Dáil – making it harder to move on from the figure of 13% female representation – lower than the European, American and Asian average.