It's International Women's Day - the day when Ireland cringes at how low a percentage of women actually hold political office in this country. But how does the west of Ireland fair in terms of female representatives on the various councils, let's see...
Mayo County Council: 3 out of 31
Sligo County Council: 6 out of 25
Leitrim: 2 from 22
Galway County Council: 3 from 30
Galway City Council: 5 from 15
Figures the Taliban would be proud of...
So what exactly stops women from entering politics? According to Clair McGing from NUI, Maynooth, there are five reasons: cash, culture, care (childcare and othewise), confidence and candidate selection.
Should these reasons apply at local level?
Cash: for what - posters, leaflets etc? Could we not create a massive online campaign? 2,000 votes should secure election for most councils.
Culture: this needs to be changed from the outside - the male dominated political class are not in the strongest position to change, we need to create a groundswell of support behind good female candidates.
Care: many Councils nowadays are changing the times of their meetings to accommodate men and women who have caring roles. It should also be made known to prospective candidates that being a local rep is not a full time role, nor should it be turned in to one.
Confidence: if this is a problem it can be changed by communities persuading female candidates that they should go ahead and run due to their ability as a community activist.
Candidate selection: hardly suprising.
If there is any small thing we can do at MeasMedia to help change things in this regard then let's pledge today of all days to do that! We could give our services free of charge to help new, up and coming female candidates in any one of these Councils... perhaps we could run and online campaign to get more women onto the Council in Galway?
No comments:
Post a Comment