Moving in from the margins - women’s political representation in Ireland

Published: Monday, September 27, 2010

UCC Women's Studies in conjunction with the Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI) presented the one day conference 'Moving in from the Margins: Women's political representation in Ireland'

Speech by Susan McKay, CEO National Women'sCouncil Of Ireland at the conference, Reviewing women's political representation in Ireland on Saturday 18 September, 2010.

I'm alright, Jill.

A couple of months ago, Mary Murphy, Cathleen O'Neill and I went to the Dail to talk with a government minister. Mary is a longtime community activist and brilliant academic and Cathleen is a brilliant campaigner and community worker. Three busy women with a lot to discuss with a minister who appeared oblivious to the impact of economic change on women.

We waited for ages in the stuffy little ante room that always reminds me of a priests drawing room.

Eventually, a man came smiling in. "Ah!" he said. "The ladies, is it?" "Not really," I said. "Oho," he laughed. "It's the girls then. Now girls, the minister is running late..." "It's not really the girls either," I said, goodhumouredly enough, I thought, though Cathleen and Mary had abandoned their polite smiles. The man's tone changed. "Well I can hardly call you "women", can I?" he snapped, nastily.

He proceeded to tell us that he had "no idea" how long it would be before the minister could see us. We mentioned other obligations and appointments. He shrugged. "The minister is a busy man," he said.

Cathleen's verdict when he'd left the room was swift and concise. "Misogynist little bollocks," she said.

There's a lot of it about, though sometimes it hides behind humour. Professor Monica McWilliams reminded us recently that after she and her colleague from the Women's Coalition were elected to the first Northern Ireland assembly after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the headline in one of the Belfast dailies was, "Hen Party Comes Home to Roost". Later on, when they rose to speak, the women had to listen to certain unionists mooing.

But in some ways, opposition from male politicians is to be expected. Politics in Ireland, North and South, has always been a male preserve. McWilliams also spoke about how back in the early days of the civil rights movement, women carried placards and chanted "one man, one vote" and didn't give it a second thought.

Minister Mary White made the point this morning that "we got the vote but we still haven't got enough women to vote for." It is worth reminding ourselves that we would not have the vote if suffragettes hadn't fought for it, often opposed by men who claimed to have the national interest at heart. At every stage, women's attempts to enter into the political arena have been opposed by men claiming there are rational explanations for women's exclusion. What is happening today is consistent with our history.

Let's look back for a moment. In 1913, a Jesuit priest who was a well known commentator on social issues, warned against women's "intrusion" into the public sphere. "In pressing women into the rough and tumble fight for existence," he opined, "In putting before her, as the ideal, the modern virago instead of the gentle maid of Nazareth, in setting her up, not as help, but as a rival of man, the modern world is working its ruin." Thank you, father.

The 1937 Constitution recognises women's role - not work, mind you - in the home, and, to paraphrase, vows to keep us there. The government turns a deaf ear to concerns raised by the UN's CEDAW about the impact of this on women's progress.

When we tried to get contraception we were told we were out to ruin the family. When we demanded to be put on juries, we were told that the details of court cases would be too upsetting. That was in the 1970's. The sexual revolution was supposed to have happened by then.

Back to the present. A brief rehearsal of the facts: women make up 50% of Ireland's population, but just 14% of seats in the Dail held by women, meaning, of course, that 86% of seats are held by men. The North is as bad.

One in three of the 23 women TDs are members of political dynasties. Mary O'Rourke, who insists she will never, never, never support affirmative measures like candidate quotas for women, denies that her own path into politics was eased by her membership of the Lenihan family. "You just have to have a big brass neck and get out there and do it," she has said.

She does, however, cheerfully tell the story of how her father told her that she had to make sure to buy her round in the pub. Her womanly take on this, was, she says, to buy the round and go home to her children.

Last week Fine Gael's Olwyn Enright, and Labour's Liz McManus, separately announced that they will not be standing at the next general election. If their seats go to men, and chances are, they will - Liz McManus has already indicated that her son is her chosen successor - Ireland will plunge from 84th to 88th in the world rankings, below Sierra Leone. We will be left with just 12.8% of women in our parliament.

All of the political parties claim they think this is a Bad Thing. They shake their heads, sadly - and then they shrug their shoulders. Their reluctance to do what must be done to bring about change is understandable, if unacceptable. More seats for women means less seats for men. All over this country, as we speak, men are waiting in line for selection as candidates for their parties. These are the Incumbents. Men who have already mastered those back-slapping, pint buying, funeral attending routines. They are inevitibly going to be hostile to the suggestion that they should make room for women.

What is harder to deal with is hostility to the promotion of women as candidates for election coming from women who have already themselves made it into the Dail. This is what the National Women's Council calls the 'I'm alright, Jill' syndrome, and it does show a sad lack of solidarity with other women.

Women TDs were recently asked by Irish Times reporter Mary Minihan if they would support the introduction of gender quotas in the candidate selection process. 14 of the women opposed the idea, with 8 in favour and one undecided. The women were from Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour, the Greens, and with one independent. Sinn Fein does not have any women TDs. It is worth considering the reasons given by the women who opposed quotas.

The most senior woman in Irish politics, Tanaiste Mary Coughlan, was against the idea because, she said: "women should be elected according to their ability." Let us simply note that Coughlan's father and uncle were in Fianna Fail politics before her, and, without undue cruelty, move on.

Mary Hanafin said quotas weren't a good idea and didn't necessarily work. Her father was a famous, and indeed to feminists, infamous, for his opposition to reproductive rights, Fianna Fail TD.

It has to be said, albeit said reluctantly, that our new Minister for Equality, Mary White, gave the most disappointing answer. I think her response will embarrass her when she looks back on it in the future. I say that because the Minister is, to her credit, embarking upon a campaign to get more women into politics, and I am confident that she will very soon realise that candidate quotas are an essential part of the package of reforms which will be necessary to bring that about.

Anyway. Here is what she said to explain her opposition to quotas. "I got in myself without a quota or target and I'm very proud of that achievement. It took me a long time to get there." And she went on to say that many people had asked her if women were "diminished" by getting elected under a quota system. And, she concluded: "That's the last thing we want."

Mary White did take a long time to get elected. Ten long years, as she mentioned here this morning. If we wait for all the women in the country to get into politics in this way, we will wait for generations. The NWCI has already estimated that at the present rate of progress, it will take 370 years for women to reach parity.

The minister also got elected as a TD for a small, relatively young party. As did Minister for Health, Mary Harney, who also said she was against quotas. Her former PD colleague, Liz O'Donnell, when she addressed the 2009 Joint Oireachtas sub committee on Women's Participation in Politics, correctly identified the fact that smaller, newer parties are more likely to have space for women. Bear in mind that in the 2007 general election, in a truly shocking 60% of constituencies, neither Fianna Fail nor Fine Gael put forward any women candidates. That did not stop Fianna Fail TD Mary Wallace telling the Irish Times that women in Fianna Fail had 'very strong role models.'

Lucinda Creighton, who embarassingly for feminists, scuppered Enda Kenny's proposal earlier this year to introduce quotas, repeated her opposition to them. Her reaction was, however, based on a realistic appraisal of the cynicism which prevails in our political system. She was not convinced, she said, that women would be placed to run in constituencies where they had a realistic chance of winning a seat. A glance at the plethora of young women who were run in unwinnable seats in the last local elections gives some credence to this view.

Creighton also correctly noted that quotas alone would not work and that other things, including the culture within political parties, would also have to change. Quotas alone would just get the parties 'off the hook'. She said she didn't want to sound 'sexist in reverse' but unfortunately since she didn't put forward any positive proposals, she sort of did.

Olwyn Enright opposed quotas and said they were "a little simplistic". I'll come back to her. Mary 'never, never, never' O'Rourke said they were 'discriminatory' and the new independent TD, Maureen O'Sullivan, said they were "insulting to women". She did not specify how it is insulting to women to offer them an opportunity currently denied to most of them.

The party which has the highest proportion of women TDs and which has a policy of adopting a statutory gender quota for candidate selection, produced the most foolish comments in opposition to quotas. Roisin Shortall said she'd never felt she'd like to be in a position to fill a quota.

Joanna Tuffy said that quotas 'discriminate against women.' She was elected in 2007 when the Labour Party's manifesto included a commitment to bringing in legislation which would require parties to impose a maximum limit on the proportion of candidates of any one gender. Otherwise, the party would lose state funding. She may have been ill informed - surprisingly, the party did not issue any official statement correcting her.

Finally, let us hear from Mary Upton: "Next thing there'll be quotas for people with blue eyes," she said, a comment which must be simply mortifying for her party. She was elected to the seat left vacant when her brother died. [post script: since this talk was delivered, Upton has announced that she, too, is leaving the Dail. Although Labour has two women candidates available, Her nephew is tipped to succeed her.]

I'm concentrating on the women who oppose quotas but to cheer us up, lets celebrate briefly those who support them. Maire Hoctor, from Fianna Fail, who is going to speak to us today, said no to the Irish Times, but said also that she might change her mind. Catherine Byrne of Fine Gael said she couldn't make up her mind. Let us try today and in the coming weeks and months, to persuade them.

Margaret Conlon of Fianna Fail, said yes, as did Beverly Cooper Flynn. We never guessed that Beverly Cooper Flynn would turn out to be a feminist heroine! Deirdre Clune of Fine Gael is also in favour, commenting that 'politics is a male dominated world.'

Liz McManus, Joan Burton and Jan O'Sullivan of Labour all said yes, with Kathleen Lynch making the most compelling statement in their favour; 'choice is democratic."

The survey generated a surprising amount of media interest, though the hard bitten might wonder if that had anything to do with it being August, before the start of the drink in/ think ins. It became very obvious during the round of radio interviews which followed the Irish Times survey, that many journalists had not understood that the idea was not to march a bunch of women unelected into the Dail, but simply to ensure that the electorate got the opportunity to vote for women. This led to some confusion.

There was a particularly interesting series of articles, editorials and letters in the Irish Times. The first, from Aidan O'Sullivan, who is, as it happens, on MEP Neasa Childers' staff, pointed out that countries with high participation by women parliamentarians, notably the Nordic countries, are 'by any international indicator, among the best performing countries in the world. They have better education, better healthcare, better childcare, lower crime and more successful economies".

Ivana Bacik's contribution to the debate was outstanding. She laid out the case for quotas as part of a range of other woman friendly measures. She put it starkly. "unless political parties are obliged to adopt targets for the number of women candidates they select, there will never be any significant increase in the number of women TDs," she wrote. She also pointed out that the report she had drafted had been adopted with unanimous cross party support. It is a pity that some of our women TDs seem not to have read it.

Gemma Hussey is one of the pioneering women in late 20th century Irish politics. When I was writing the history of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre she told me about campaigning for rape legislation and how daunting it was to stand up in the Senate in 1979. She said she'd recently seen a press photo of herself from that era, "wreathed in cheroot smoke and looking as tough as old boots." That may have been how she looked, but inside, she told me, "I was terrified out of my wits...I was going to have to stand up in the Oireachtas and use words like penis and penetration and vagina. In those days, women just didn't talk about those things. You were regarded with terrible suspicion. What you were up against was a strange hostility that gave you a shock each time you encountered it."

I am sure that many of you are familiar with that strange hostility. Hussey was up against a former Minister for Justice who accused her of 'emotionalism' and said it was necessary in a rape trial for defence lawyers to attack a complainant over her sexual history since "if she was promiscuous it was relevant." Hussey recalled Charlie Haughey, who in 1979 progressed from being minister for health to being Taoiseach, passing behind her. "He tweaked my bra strap. I wheeled around and he said, "Don't you worry about your bill. We'll get that through."

After this summer's survey, Hussey wrote to the Irish Times calling for immediate action. We had to look, she said, towards 'enlightened countries which have used a variety of interventions...to redress what they saw as shameful and historic imbalance in their parliaments."

Joanna Tuffy appeared furious at the 'I'm alright Jill' charge and accused the National Women's Council of trying to dictate to women. Quotas were, she insisted, an interference with democracy. Strange that both the United Nations and the European Commission have stated that the use of temporary special measures to redress a historic imbalance does not constitute discrimination.

There should be no interference with party selection conventions, Tuffy also said, as if these conventions represented democracy a its purest. In reality, candidates are put on the ticket for all kinds of internal party reasons. Geographical quotas are well established. Since 1997, under the electoral act, political parties have received substantial funds from the tax payer. Included in the rationale for this payment is the promotion of women in politics. This law was brought in by a Labour coalition government.

Kathleen Dunne, the chair of Labour women called the system whereby 50% of the population was represented by 13% of TDs 'an affront to democracy' while Madeline Hawke of the new Irish Feminist Network said that the true interference with democracy was the profound lack of choice for Irish voters.

Miriam Murphy raised the issue of under-representation of 'both men and women from lower income groups.' Gender she said was a distraction from 'more pressing inequalities.' There should, in our view, be no such competition. Traditional left wing politics has not served women well, as we can see if we look at the upper echelons of the Trade Union movement where women are disgracefully under-represented. The National Women's Council campaigns for equality not just for some women, but for all women. Many of the most politically able women among our members are in women's groups in some of Ireland's most disadvantaged areas, rural and urban.

Ultan O'Broin speculated that the reason so many women TDs had opposed quotas might be "because they fear an erosion in their vote...if another woman is on the ballot paper." He also commented that the dynastic tradition must end if change is to come to Irish politics. Liz McManus please note.

Sarah Carey, whose father is a Fine Gael councillor, and who says she has been invited to stand for the party on more than one occasion, wrote in her weekly column that quotas just wouldn't work. "From local to national conventions there'd be one row after another as popular and well qualified men were forced to stand down to let despised 'quota' women take their place."

Minister White, perhaps mindful of how her earlier remarks might be construed wrote that she did want "a rapid change" in getting more women elected. She rapped the Women's Council on the knuckles for trivialising the issue: There was no I'm alright Jill attitude, she said. "the Jills already elected are acutely aware that they need company."

Professor David Farrell pointed out that just 4 EU countries have a worse record than Ireland on representation of women in their parliament. They are Cyprus, Romania, Hungary and Malta. He said the use of quotas has mushroomed from 20 countries in the 1990s to over 100 now. "There are whole swathes of Irish countryside that have never seen a woman candidate," he noted, calling the situation 'dismal.' He gave the last word to the author of an award winning book on quotas which concludes that the international evidence clearly points to the need for quotas "to bring about major change in women's access to elected office."

Orla Fagan suggested a reason for the I'm alright jill attitude when she wrote that when there were few women in parliament, they were 'forced to act like their male counterparts.' An Irish Times editorial writer agreed with the Womens Council that since the foundation of the state, the political parties have 'ruthlessly discriminated against women', citing the marriage bar which required women to leave public service and other jobs when they got married. This only stopped in 1974 after we joined the EU.

Labour councillor and former minister, Niamh Bhreatnach, said that the original question to the TDs should have been, are you satisfied with how things are. Paul Quilligan said this was not about giving women an unfair disadvantage but about 'correcting an imbalance'.

However, the most superbly ignorant missive came from Kevin James o'Mahoney from Palm Valley Boulevard, San Jose, California. He was an ardent supporter of chivalry towards women, he wrote, but not in the political arena. Gender quotas would bring about a two tiered system composed of men who were there "exclusively as a result of their aptitude" and women who were there "for no other reason than the fact that they are women". Quotas, he concluded, would "denigrate the professional honour of women TDs by tethering them permanently to the stigma of preferential and pampered treatment."

Within weeks of the survey appearing, Olwyn Enright announced that she was quitting politics. She was pregnant with her second child, and life as a TD was not, she said, for her, compatible with being a mother. She spoke to journalist Kathy Sheridan: "In other countries female MPs can take time off and be replaced for a while. "In Ireland, you'd never win your seat again...If you could take proper maternity leave or look at the idea of taking leave of absence, then you'd consider it."

She was aware, she said, that she was "walking off the pitch and not challenging it." But, she said, "the way I see it is, I don't want to have to explain to my children in years to come, 'Well you know, it was really important for women that I stayed in there, so sorry about you.' I had to decide my priorities, and my priorities are them at the end of the day." It is a struggle familiar to many mothers in all kinds of jobs.

Enright refered to the "inexplicable" 2.30pm Dáil start on Tuesdays, the "daft" Wednesday-night sittings, the constituency meetings that stretch pointlessly into the night and the drop-everything requirement when a funeral looms. Her conclusion? "It suits men. It does really. Women don't have wives at home, but you are up against people who do."

Now for the good news: "I'm certainly moving towards quotas now. I am beginning to think more and more that that unless we do something to get a bulk of women in there, nothing is going to change."

So let's do something. Let's be the modern viragos the Jesuit warned against in 1913. Let's make the system change. Minister White spoke here today about the sacrifices she and other women have made to go into politics in this country. We should also think about the brave women who are standing in todays elections in Afghanistan, and for the brave women and men who will vote for them, in a country where standing up for women's equality can mean sacrificing your life.

Did you know that women are not supposed to expose their elbows in the Dail? So I was told recently on another visit, while walking along corridors through which many men in grey suits and no doubt carefully chosen ties passed importantly. I don't know whether the exposed female elbow is considered indecent or simply dangerous, but I suggest that we start using them as sharp objects. Veteran feminist Sylvia Meehan said on International women's day this year that while we've achieved a lot in ireland, we still haven't got political power, and that is what we need. Lets elbow our way to the top. After all, last week an ally of Silvio Berlusconi declared that women should use their bodies to get ahead in politics.

Minister White spoke earlier about how she used to have a little green glove on a stick to get attention during council meetings. Maybe we should take a leaf out of the amazing Katie Taylor's book. You might not have noticed much in today's papers, but she did win her third gold medal for Ireland last night. Maybe those little sticks should have boxing gloves on them.

Thank you.