Varadkar wants 20 female Fine Gael TDs elected after next General Election

The Taoiseach wants at least 20 female Fine Gael TDs elected after the next General Election.

Speaking at the launch of an action plan to accelerate gender equality in third level education, Leo Varadkar said his party is putting special supports in place to get more women elected.

The action plan will see 45 female-only senior academic positions made available over the next three years in a bid to tackle gender inequality in third level education.

Minister of State for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor said the introduction of the gender-specific post had gone through "rigorous legal assessment to ensure its consistency with the EU and national law".

She has also set a target of having 40% of professorships filled by women by 2024.

Ms Mitchell O'Connor sent out a clear warning to institutions that do not reach the targets stating that "a carrot and stick approach" will be adopted and up to 10% of the core funding could be cut if universities and ITs do not make progress.

The initiative is responding to analysis which Ms Mitchell O'Connor said found that women face a number of serious barriers to progression that are not experienced to the same degree by their male colleagues.

While 51% of university lecturers were female in 2017, only 24% of professors were female. In the Institute of Technology sector, 45% of lecturers are female, but only 36% senior lecturer positions were held by females last year.

Mr Varadkar admitted that there are "mixed feelings" to the initiative to increase the number of women in third level education positions.

Asked if the role-out of gender-specific posts was gender discrimination in reverse he said it is "a big change" but added that interventions are now necessary to achieve greater equality.

"We are just not going to get to 40% without accelerators, roughly half of lecturers in our ITs and universities are female yet as you go up the pyramid that falls off and the way things are heading it will be 2040 or 2050 before we have 40% or more professors, occasionally you just have to have accelerators."

Asked if he would aim to have a 50/50 split in his Cabinet, Mr Varadkar said:

There are 12 women TDs who support the Government who voted for me as Taoiseach and out of those 12 seven are ministers, so if you are a female TD who votes for me as Taoiseach... it ain't bad odds.

Mr Varadkar said that while Fine Gael has more female TDs than any other party, more women need to be elected "and we are working on that".

"I want to make sure there are at least 20 female TDs in my party," he added.

Mr Varadkar said he will ensure that at least 30% of Fine Gael candidates are female in the next General Election and has tasked Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty with heading up work around putting "special efforts behind them to help them get elected".

So that's what needs to be done, we need many more TDs who are female, many more senators who are female so we get to that point where we can have many more women around the Cabinet table and that's what I want to achieve.