The increasingly popular idea of gender quotas for political office is to misunderstand why voters don't vote for women,writes Ronnie O'Toole.
The latest local elections have reconfirmed what we have know for some time - as a whole, we don't seem inclined to vote for women very much.
The returning officers had scarcely stood down from their microphones when the National Women's Council had redistributed their oft-dusted down press release calling for a statutory gender quota in politics. Their campaign, however, might finally be bearing fruit - a number of the smaller political parties actively support the idea (Greens, Sinn Féin and the Socialist Party), while the Labour Party, though not fully signed up, is not particularly averse to it either. In fact, Ruairí Quinn as party leader in 2002 came out explicitly in support of the policy.
The problem is that while the two major parties don't agree with a statutory gender quota, they are very shy about strongly advancing the arguments against it. This is a pity - these arguments are overwhelming. Currently, there is virtually no impediment on a person, regardless of religion, race, gender, sexuality, etc., being nominated for any party, and no impediment on a person, regardless of religion, race, gender, sexuality, to voting for them, a principle that is fundamental to our democracy.
To understand the phenomenon of the low level of female representatives, it is necessary to understand why women don't stand for election, and why we do not feel inclined to vote for them when they do.
Taking the second question first and rephrasing it, "who is not voting for women"? The answer, as revealed in a recent UCC study, is to a significant extent older women. For some reason, older women do not tend to vote for female candidates. What lies behind this political choice is unclear, though we can guess that older women tend to be somewhat conservative and place higher value on family rearing than success in the workplace.
Whatever the explanation, how can we have this clear political opinion, shared by a significant portion of the female electorate, systematically annulled in all future elections?
One genuine reason that may explain the relatively low level of female participation at different levels of government is that we ask different things of politicians at different levels.
At local government level, for example, we probably aren't as bothered by a candidate's ideological persuasion - local politicians have very little political power, and are more project managers than ideological champions. What we want from local politicians is to act as trouble-shooters directly on our behalf to solve case-by-case problems - what we want is their time.
Local politicians who are willing to give of their time will, all things being equal, do better in elections than those that don't. That's why, broadly speaking, men do better than women in local elections. In fact, only 18 per cent of successful local government candidates were women in 2004.
However, as we move to elections with geographically larger constituencies, the amount of time a candidate is able to dedicate to each individual voter in their clinic becomes less important, and their ideological stance grows in importance.
In elections where personal contact is important, at local and Dáil elections, female representation has been low, hovering in the teens for a number of years. When we move to large constituencies where personal contact is not feasible, as in the European elections, we find that 38 per cent of Irish MEPs are women (not to mention the fact that 100 per cent of sitting presidents are female).
The point is that the high level of male representation at local government level and in the Dáil is mostly not directly a reflection of their gender. Rather, it reflects an inherent bias towards anyone who is willing to spend more time at their political activities, and they disproportionately tend to be male.
The National Women's Council has also claimed that Government policy decisions reflect an inherent bias against women, which stems from decades of under-representation. By this theory, presumably women (51 per cent of the electorate) have ignored their own interests since universal suffrage was introduced. Further, we only have to look at rates of male alcoholism, suicide, mental illness, life expectancy, drug addiction, depression, etc., to bring this accepted wisdom into question.
If, hypothetically, we did decide to implement some quota system, on what criteria should we decide which group would be favoured? True, women have a relatively low level of representation in parliament. However other groups have absolutely no representation. There is no TD from any of Ireland's racial minorities, for example. There is no TD who is a member of the Travelling community or who has a significant physical handicap. How many openly gay TDs do we have? On what grounds can women raise their claim above all these other groups?
If some group were to be granted a quota, the best criterion would be to target population segments that don't vote. For example, it is well documented that people in disadvantaged areas are far less likely to vote than the population average, and therefore we can assume that their views aren't represented to the fullest extent.
The irony is, of course, that the group that can force this issue up the political agenda can only do so because it is already a very powerful political lobby. The nuclear option of a statutory quota, if it is used at all, should be retained for those who are genuinely ignored, disenfranchised and frustrated by their lack of political representation, not women.
If the NWC or others want more female political representatives, let them do it by encouraging female candidates to stand, candidates who are willing to commit themselves fully to what is a difficult and time-consuming occupation. The crude alternative of statutory quotas will only institutionalise discrimination in our democratic system, whilst artificially magnifying the demands of an already powerful political lobby.
Dr Ronnie O'Toole is the Barrington lecturer in economics with the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland