More women in politics - Tell your Labour TDs now

Published: Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Claiming our Future Campaign

This is a critical moment in our campaign to ensure that more women are elected to the Dail.

We now know what happens when only one candidate in six is a woman - we get a new Dail in which only one TD in six is a woman.

That's pretty clear evidence that if we want a Dail that better reflects all the talents of our society, we need to ensure that in the next election more women can put their names forward as candidates.

A lot of things are needed to make that happen. Some have characterised the changes we need as " the five C's" : Childcare, Cash, Confidence, Culture and Candidate selection procedures.

Claiming our Future has made a specific proposal which will help address some of these problems, and encourage the political system to address the others. We have proposed that the funding that political parties receive from the taxpayer should be reduced if parties fail to nominate a broadly equal number of male and female candidates.

A few parties, including Labour adopted this proposal in their election manifestos. What we will discover this week is whether Labour seeks to get this proposal adopted in the Programme for Government, and whether they succeed.

To help them make up their minds we are asking everyone who has signed the petition to do two things:

First we are asking you to e-mail your newly elected Labour TDs to tell them that this manifesto commitment is important to you, and you want it acted on. You can do that by clicking here.

Second, we need you to tell as many of your friends as possible about the petition and this campaign. You can do that by clicking the 'e-mail' button on the campaign web-site. and cutting and pasting this text into the section marked 'note'.