We need to do more than talk about getting more female TDs
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Now that the dust is settling on the 2024 general election, will political parties take this golden opportunity to increase female representation in local councils through the co-option process?
While the spotlight will be on government formation talks in the weeks ahead, parties will be filling the seats left vacant by county councillors elected to Dáil Éireann and this will have a significant impact on the shape of local government in the next five years.
With more than 50 county councillors elected, parties will be using the co-option process to fill vacant council seats. There is no time like the present to improve the gender balance at local government level.
With all counts now completed, the group calculates 52 county councillors throughout the country have been elected, which means the co-option processes, used to fill council vacancies, now offer a golden opportunity to improve gender balance at local government level.
By prioritising gender equity during co-option, parties can increase the number of female councillors and provide them with the incumbency advantage needed to boost their chances in future elections.
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Here in See Her Elected, we have tracked the number of county councillors elected to the Dáil, and our data shows a total of 52 council seats throughout the country will be vacated because of this general election.
A breakdown of those figures shows 12 Fianna Fáil councillors have been elected, 14 Fine Gael councillors, nine Sinn Féin, five Labour and five Social Democrats.
Political parties talk a good talk about supporting women in politics, but now is the time to walk the walk. The two parties with the lowest number of female councillors countrywide before the election were Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
Only 21% of Fianna Fáil’s councillors are women, and 73% of Fine Gael’s are men. Now is the time for these two parties to bring gender equity to the fore in their co-option process so women are co-opted into their newly vacated council seats.
Last week’s poll did not see the percentage of female TDs increasing by any significant margin but it is worth noting a record number of women had run in this year’s local and general elections.
Breaking this down, we see 246 women ran in the general election, which was a 52% increase in the numbers in the last general election in 2020. We also saw a record number of women (615) running as candidates in this year’s local elections, which accounted for 32.5% of the overall number of candidates, so more and more women are seeing politics as a possible career path.
This was the first general election where the 40% quota rule applied but that did not translate into a significant increase in the number of female TDs elected.
We have seen cases where women were added to tickets too late in the day, which gave them no real chance to work on their profile or campaign. Parties need to row in behind their female candidates if they want them to have a real chance of getting elected.
If women, and women from differing backgrounds, are not present in the grassroots membership, then party leaders need to ask why and have a recruitment plan implemented that is not mere lip service. Leadership is required to demonstrate to the entire party membership, branch by branch, that this party means what it says about equity in political representation.
Women make up 50% of the population but they still do not have equal representation at the decision-making tables. Ireland ranks 104th in the world for the number of women at national parliament level. Women are still starkly under-represented in both local and national politics, in rural Ireland in particular.
If politics is a long game, then so is candidate development.
Research and analysis of the 2024 local election results from See Her Elected showed a substantial electoral advantage for incumbent candidates, regardless of gender. This has significant implications for gender representation, particularly given the existing under-representation of women in local government.
Now, political parties have a chance to address this imbalance in a small but significant way through the well-worn path of co-option.
In the 2024 local elections, 68% of co-opted councillors who ran were successfully elected, significantly outperforming new candidates, with a 19% success rate.
Co-opting women to vacant council seats now is an investment in the future for political parties. It will not only boost immediate female representation but also enhance the chances of these women in the 2029 local elections.
We can lay the foundations for more equitable gender representation at local level. This is an opportunity that should not be missed.
- Mairead O’Shea is communications manager with See Her Elected