Women remain under represented in politics - Tully

Ireland still has work to do to secure gender equality within our political system, according to Senator Pauline Tully.

The figures back up the locally based Sinn Féin politician. Just 44 women were elected to the 174 Dáil Éireann seats available in 2024. There are 14 constituencies with no women TDs. With only 25.3% of TDs female, this consigns Ireland to the worst record for female representation in the lower chamber of parliaments in Western Europe, and languishing 99th worst in the world. There’s a similar discrepancy when it comes to senior politicians, as an online article by law lecturer Dr. Jennifer Kavanagh observes, there are as many ministers called James as women in the cabinet.

“If we look at the Dáil make-up,” begins Senator Pauline Tully, “the percentage of women is very low.

“The Seanad this time is better, it’s 45-46%, but that was due to a good many being appointed by the Taoiseach and Tanáiste in the government appointees - which is good and is welcome, but it still indicates that women are not being elected.”

She says some female politicians feel like they aren’t given the best opportunity to contest winnable seats.

“I would have heard from female politicians in other parties where they were selected to stand in a constituency, but then there might be a male candidate put in the constituency as well, where there is a chance of taking one seat - so they are not really given the chance to win the seat.”

That Sinn Féin has female leaders on both sides of the border is reflective of the party’s genuine and long-standing focus on addressing gender equality.

“We have a rule where there’s two candidates of equal ability to go through to the election, the priority will be given to the female because there is a conscious decision to try to promote women within the party.”

“We also have probably a higher proportion of TDs and Senators than any other party, especially for the size of our party at national level.”

Taking a local perspective she recalls:

“I was on Cavan County Council from 1999 to 2012 and when I was elected I was one of only three female politicians out of 25, and the ratio hasn’t improved a whole pile in that time - I know there’s a reduction in the number of councillors, but there’s still very few in it.”

Senator Tully concedes that Sinn Féin has no female councillors amongst their trio elected last year.

“We did run female candidates but unfortunately they weren’t elected,” she observes.

Senator Tully lays out the actions political parties need to take:

“People vote on who they perceive to be a good candidate, so it’s about promoting the person and ensuring the public know who the person is and what they have achieved in their lives.

“There is an onus on parties to ensure that they are promoting someone in the proper way, that they are not standing too many candidates, and that they are putting women in winnable seats, and not just as an add on to reach the quotas.”

The former secondary school teacher says that education has key role in addressing the imbalance and ensuring people are brought up “with the right attitudes” to gender equality.

“The world is quite scary at the moment,” she says with a nod to influential world leaders.

“I feel there’s an increase in misogyny. I have concerns about the direction world politics is going - you have elements of it in every country. Education has a huge part to play, to ensure young people respect everybody, and respect people for their differences.”

She advocates looking at the examples of parliaments which have achieved a balanced political system.

“If you look at Iceland or some of the other Scandinavian countries who have a more or less 50-50 ratio of men and women involved in national parliaments - and they achieved that through introducing quotas - you do see it working. The focus in those parliaments changes compared to male dominated parliaments in that they are more concerned about social issues. There is a mix. So it’s not all about the hard financial and economic factors, which of course are important, it’s about ensuring that people are cared for, with proper childcare systems and proper systems looking after elderly people, and disabled people have more rights.”

This latter point is a key motivation for Senator Tully. In the last Dáil term she was her party’s spokesperson on disability and care.

“While disabled people are male and female, they do not have equality whatsoever - we have a long way to go. If we look at representation of disabled people in either Seanad or the Dáil, it’s non-existent. As bad as the male female ratio is, the difference between able bodied people and disabled people is atrocious - from a workload point of view it’s not just a matter of ensuring we have women, but it’s about making sure we see disabled women and women of colour in there as well,” she vows.