Would women's lives be greatly improved if many more of them were in power? Not necessarily, argues Fionola Meredith
The crisp click of female heels remains a faint sound in Ireland's corridors of power. New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that only 14 per cent of TDs in the Dáil and 20 per cent of regional and local authorities are women. And anyone who cherishes the prospect of gender parity in Irish government might have a rather long wait on their hands. At current rates, it will take 370 years for the percentage of women in the Dáil to reach 50 per cent. It's a gross under-representation that we need to address immediately, according to the National Women's Council of Ireland, which is calling on the government "to introduce legislation to ensure that there is at least 40 per cent of either sex in both houses of the Oireachtas, as candidates of political parties and in social partnership structures". The NWCI's director, Joanna McMinn, says that the report "clearly highlights the failure of the Government to remedy this democratic deficit and the lack of regard for the interests of half the population in Ireland".
Received wisdom tells us that women will only have an impact on political decisions once they achieve a "critical mass" (usually 30 to 40 per cent) within legislative bodies. It's a notion borrowed from nuclear physics, where critical mass is the amount of fissile material needed to start a chain reaction, sparking an irreversible take-off into a radically transformed situation. To many campaigners, the idea of this magic number of women blasting their way into power is a matter of simple democratic justice. It's only fair - after all, women make up half the population, don't they?
But poke beneath the surface of this apparently self-evident truth, and things start to look a bit murkier. Putting women into political power isn't necessarily a victory for women's rights. And some feminists are starting to acknowledge that critical mass is more of a theoretical expectation than a demonstrable effect.
AMERICAN ACADEMICS SARAH Childs and Mona Lena Krook point out that "it is increasingly obvious that there is neither a single nor a universal relationship between the percentage of women elected to political office and the passage of legislation beneficial to women as a group." In fact, there's some evidence that critical mass can be counter-productive for women: Childs and Krooks say that, in some cases, "women appear to make a difference - in fact, sometimes a greater difference - when they form a small minority of legislators, either because their increased numbers provoke a backlash among male legislators or because their increased numbers allow individual women to pursue other policy goals."
But Yvonne Galligan, director of the Centre for Women's Advancement in Politics, at Queen's University Belfast, urges caution with this line of thinking.
"Do women legislators 'act for' women? It's the wrong question to be asking: it sets women up to be divided from one another. And if you answer it negatively, then you are saying why bother having women in the first place, we'll have a permanent male majority just as we always have done.
"The right question is: do we want a democracy that is a true reflection of the society we live in?"
"We're talking about parity of esteem for women here," says McMinn. "I have no doubt that critical mass makes a difference. For instance, if we had a critical mass of women in the Dáil, the childcare issue would be resolved. The European average for public spending on fully subsidised childcare is 1 per cent of GDP. Ireland spends only 0.4 per cent of GDP, and we could easily afford to spend more. If large numbers of women were voted in, that would change."
AS FAR AS McMinn is concerned, there's only one way that elusive 40 per cent figure - recommended by the Council of Europe - will be achieved. "There have to be quotas, let's be clear about that. There's no point pussy-footing around. Quotas are already being used in many countries throughout the world, not to prefer women, but to remove discrimination". Isn't the 40 per cent target rather unrealistic, given the prevailing male-dominated political climate? McMinn is philosophical: "Well, if you aim for the stars, you might land on the moon."
We can't assume that female legislators will champion issues that have traditionally been dear to women's hearts - such as health, education and family - purely by virtue of their gender. And of course, many well-known women politicians are intensely wary of citing gender as an influence on their political priorities. But campaigners are convinced that more women in government will mean increased efficiency and accountability, and an enhanced legislative receptiveness to both women's and men's differing perspectives and needs.
As far as they are concerned, when it comes to critical mass, size really does matter.