Sir, – This week Cork City Council backed a motion, tabled by members of its cross-party women’s caucus, on the need for fair representation of women in local government and put its weight behind the Alliance for Local Quotas’ call for 40 per cent candidate gender quotas to apply to the 2024 local elections.
The National Women’s Council has convened this broad-based alliance, bringing together national and local organisations and political scientists to campaign for quotas at local level. It is an important initiative.
Just under a quarter of all councillors elected in 2019 were women, though there are some exceptional councils. Dún Laoghaire Rathdown has close to 50:50 gender representation. In Cork city the ratio is 25 men to six women. Yet council services, including local infrastructure, libraries, housing, and support for community and environmental initiatives, are used equally by women and men and need the perspectives of both in their planning and assessment.
Ireland lags behind the European average of 32 per cent representation of women in local government. We have been extraordinarily slow to recognize either that this is a problem or that it can be fixed. By contrast, France introduced candidate gender quotas in municipal elections 22 years ago, when it passed its first “parity law”.
Legislating for gender quotas before 2024 would be an important step. It is also a reminder that potential new councillors, political parties, and local groups should be beginning the process of preparation for those elections. It is important that candidates are carefully selected, know exactly what the job involves, and that gender and diverse representation is taken seriously, with no one approached at the last minute simply to fulfil the quota. – Yours, etc,
Dr SANDRA McAVOY,
Cork.