WOMEN MINISTERS:WOMEN APPOINTED to cabinet today should not be regarded as "token females", according to Fine Gael TD Lucinda Creighton.
She said it was essential that women who became ministers today, and those who would soon be appointed as junior ministers, “should not be referred to as filling a gender quota” by other politicians and media commentators.
“They have a mandate the same as any other candidate. I hope they will be taken seriously as contributors in their own right and not simply as people who are there as having to tick the boxes,” Ms Creighton said.
She said there had been a “robust debate” within her party on gender quotas, during which “a lot of women within Fine Gael led the charge in saying we didn’t believe they were part of the solution”.
She said plenty of women had in the past been put on tickets as candidates in constituencies where they had “absolutely no hope” of getting elected.
She therefore welcomed the commitment in the programme for government to link party subsidies to the number of women candidates put up for election.
“It literally puts a bomb under political parties to force them to get their act together to ensure not only are women getting put on tickets but getting across the line and getting elected.”
Ms Creighton was speaking at a cross-party event chaired by RTÉ presenter Keelin Shanley and organised by Women for Europe to mark International Women’s Day in Dublin yesterday.
Former Fianna Fáil TD Áine Brady said her party was “in a very bad place” in terms of elected women representatives in the aftermath of the general election. “It’s regrettable we have no female politicians elected to the 31st Dáil,” she said.
“It was just obviously a tsunami against Fianna Fáil. Female candidates got the same battering as our male candidates.”
However, Ms Brady said she was pleased at the attitude of party leader Micheál Martin to bringing more women into frontline politics.
A total of 23 women TDs have been returned to the Dáil.
