Failing to address the gender imbalance

"We want to see as many of them as possible." This was the one-line response from Enda Kenny when he was asked — at the launch of his party’s election campaign in 2011 — if female representation would increase under a Fine Gael government.

But his new junior ministerial line-up announced yesterday shows that, while there might be a need for women TDs to be seen, there is little progress in having them heard when it comes to important roles.

It was widely anticipated that the Taoiseach would use the reshuffle opportunity to redress a huge gender imbalance which was considered to have been one of the shortcomings in his original line up.

In 2011, he appointed just one senior minister, Frances Fitzgerald, and one junior, Lucinda Creighton — who has since been sacked leaving the party without any women in this rank.

By failing to right this imbalance yesterday, he has left the women in his party feeling “miffed” in the words of one, and wondering if their career progression is tougher than that faced by male counterparts. Due to the promotion of Labour’s Jan O’Sullivan and Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, there are now more women in the Cabinet than ever in the history of the State, holding four out of 15 senior posts.

And many in politics argued yesterday that there were a lot of men also left disappointed, but that’s just the nature of the game. However, there are enough women to chose from the Fine Gael back-benches, or “class of 2011” — Áine Collins, Regina Doherty, and Mary Mitchell O’Connor — that leave the Taoiseach with few excuses for not having a more balanced set of representation.

There are many reasons why he should have done so. The first is political. The Taoiseach himself said yesterday morning he wanted to “refresh” his team. The presentation of a “new look” energised team, less than two years out from the next election, was helped by the promotion of 27-year-old and well-respected TD, Simon Harris, to the position of junior finance minister.

But the image of a more equal, representative, modern team was not helped by the failure to promote women.

It also undermines the principle behind the gender quota, to be introduced at the next general election and feeds into the impression that the Dáil is not a friendly place for women.

The strongest case for why women should have been promoted is that it would lead to fairer policy outcomes

The Tánaiste, Joan Burton, referred to this notion in an interview on RTÉ Radio’s Miriam Meets last year when she said many of her Government colleagues had little direct knowledge of policy issues they are discussing, particularly when it came to “all sorts of struggles”.

Referring to the initial response to the Magdalene laundries report, which was seen as insensitive to the women involved, she said: “You have a lot of men around the table and they haven’t had much contact with some of these issues.”

Similarly, no one in Government seemed to take much notice when drawing up the personal insolvency guidelines, that they would grant powers to banks which would force parents, in most cases women, to give up their work if childcare was too expensive.

Asked in the Dáil yesterday about criticism from the UN’s Committee on Human Rights about the denial of rights of women and children in this country, Mr Kenny said there was an “endless list” of issues that were left “lying around” for many years. “Why did the State deny its responsibility in respect of Magdalenes? Why did the State deny its responsibility in respect of Bethany? Why did the State deny its responsibility in respect of mother and baby homes? Why did the State not do something about symphysiotomy before this?” he asked.

The answers to these questions are complex. But one place to start is with the lack of women in decision-making positions over the years — something he is not now willing to change.