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What Do You Know About Your 2014 Local Election Candidates?

May11

It’s time to be informed

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In the run up to the 2014 Donegal Local Elections, NCCWN- Donegal Women’s Network has sent out an ‘Open Invitation’ to all 2014 local election candidates to respond to questions that have been identified as areas of concern by voters in Donegal.

All candidates running have been invited to respond and to pledge to undertake specific actions if they are successful and elected onto Donegal County Council. All responses or non-responses, will be published on the Donegal Democrat’s specifically designed web- page  ‘BE INFORMED…..  about your 2014 Local Candidates.’ This we believe will give the electorate an insight into each candidate as well as giving the candidates an open forum which could be helpful in securing votes.

The questions cover a number of topics covering; childcare, cuts to carers, Domestic Abuse + Violence Against Women, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT), Travellers, Women’s Political Representation and Equality within our society. In the next couple of weeks our readers will receive an overview of the candidate’s responses as well as the link to the Donegal Democrat’s web page and that of NCCWN- Donegal Women’s Networks.

With 83 confirmed candidates in Donegal and sadly, only 11 female nominations in the county which include: Rena Donaghey FF, Mary Mc Cauley FF Claudia Kennedy, FF, Grace Boyle, FG, Siobhan Mc Laughlin, Labour, Maire Therese O Gallachoir, SF, Naimh Kennedy, Ind, Berne Mulhern, Ind, Patricia Mc Cafferty, Ind, Charlie Mc Dyer, People Before Profit and Eilish Haden, Direct Democracy Ireland.

This lack of female representation is been acknowledged by many men and women on the doorsteps in Donegal, with more women in the county council been seen as advantageous to a more effective running council.  One voter said, “Women are very practical and work more from a collective perspective as opposed to taking ‘territorial and confrontational’ stances.”

Taking a broad sweep of female representation across the North West the following clearly indicates little has changed to encourage and support the participation of female candidates despite the fact that the female membership of our two largest parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is between 35% and 40%.

In Donegal Fine Gael have one woman running and 13 men; in Sligo – 10 men and one woman; in Leitrim – two women and 9 men. And, this is the party that introduced gender quotas!

Fianna Fail is no better.  In Donegal: 15 men and three women; In Sligo: one woman and eight men; in Leirim the situation is a little better with 9 men and 3 women.  Yet, Michael Martin, in Fianna Fail’s Gender Equality Action Plan, committed to ‘renew Irish politics and make it more representative’.  In the Irish Times (2/4/14) Senator Averil Power bravely criticised her own party’s failure to take serious action to address its low female representation.

Nationally there has been an increase of female participation for this local election with an increase of 6 % (from 17 % to 23 %.) All parties except FF have showed an increase,

FG – up by 5 %. Labour – up by 7 %. SF up by 9 % with the highest selection of female candidates within Anti Austerity Alliance at 33.3% and People Before Profit at 40%.

Under new legislation, the ‘Electoral (Amendment )Political Funding Bill 2011’, which comes into effect for the next general election,  political parties will be obliged to implement an electoral ‘gender’ quota or suffer severe financial penalties. Each party will have to have at least 30 % women on the ballot paper. Fine Gael for example last year under Electoral Acts received 2.8 million euro and therefore stands to lose up to 1.4 million euro. I wonder will the threat of financial penalty help to focus the minds of the men in power?

Watch this space!

 

Are you a Feminist? You Might be one If….

Apr29

are you a fem

President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins is not behind the door when he states that he is a feminist. Neither was his two predecessors President, Mary McAleese and President, Mary Robinson.

The San Diego State University chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW),  has a flier entitled – “You Might Be A Feminist If…” , that includes the following attributes that allow men and women to see what it means, essentially, to be a feminist:

  • you are a woman or man that believes in ending sexism.
  • you believe in equal pay for equal work.
  • you support choice and reproductive freedom.
  • you believe that women should not fear for their safety at night.
  • you believe that rape victims should be treated with respect, not suspicion.
  • you believe that women should not be defined by their bodies.
  • you want to see more female representation in elected office.
  • you know that equal rights are not “special rights”.
  • you believe that no opportunity should be closed to a woman because of her gender, race, class, or sexuality.
  • you believe that religion is not an excuse for sexism.
  • you want your daughter, mother, friend, sister, girlfriend, or wife to be safe from violence.
  • you believe in speaking up and taking action to end sexism.
  • you believe that women, women’s work, and women’s opinions matter.

Feminism means all of these things. If you agree with all or many of these statements, you might just be a feminist! Many people who read this list, and previously had not considered themselves to be feminists, reconsider their position.

Finola Brennan, Co-ordinator  NCCWN – DWN shares her thoughts on feminism –

“Feminism means very many different things to very many different people. 

For me, feminism is the belief that all people should be treated equally in legal, economic, social and political arenas – regardless of gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and other similar predominant identifying traits. 

Feminism includes the idea that a person’s gender does not define who they are or what they are worth and that being a woman [or indeed, a man] should not put a person at an overall, and especially -institutionalized disadvantage. 

Sometimes calling oneself a feminist comes with a plethora of stigmas including that one is a bra burning,  man-hating  militant, and of course – a lesbian! 

Nearly all who would consider themselves under the feminist umbrella would agree that the core of feminism revolves around a fundamental belief in equality.”

The editorial group of the National Collective of Community-based Women’s Networks – Donegal Women’s Network (NCCWN- DWN) would be interested in hearing your point of view.

How we work and what we do

Apr8

We highlight the reality of women’s lives in Donegal and promote social justice, equality and women’s human rights.

dwn what is does

Donegal Women’s Network is part of the umbrella organisation, the National Collective of Community-Based Women’s Networks (NCCWN) there are 17 networks across Ireland all working to support women in their community.

Work done by the NCCWN-Donegal Women’s Network includes providing;

  • Telephone advise
  • Up yo date, relevant information on women’s issues
  • Support the set up of new groups
  • Training
  • Networking Events
  • International Women’s Day and Rural Women’s Day Celebrations
  • Women’s Voices- A weekly feature in the Thursday edition of the Donegal Democrat. These features highligh women’s acheimements and raises awareness of many issues affecting women in Donegal
  • Links Local issues to national

If you are interested in our work or would like to find out more please take a look at our facebook page and we can also be contacted by email on donwonnet@eircom.net

The 5050 North West Group Letter to Editor of Donegal Democrat

Mar10

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Dear Editor,

A number of representatives of the North West 5050 group attended the February County Council meeting in Lifford.  5050 is a single national advocacy group dedicated to achieving equal representation in Irish politics. We were welcomed by the Mayor and found the morning both informative and interesting.

However we came away disappointed at the ‘carry on’ of a number of Councillors and aghast that the business of the day can so easily be hijacked by individual posturing and aggressive behaviour.

As ‘Democracy’ was a much mentioned term within the chamber I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the following:

“Equality of representation between women and men is a pre-requisite to participative

democracy.  In its absence, the needs and priorities of one section of the population continue

to be ‘represented’ by another.”

[“Balances along the Border” Marie Crawley & Louise O Meara]

It is very disappointing we only have 6 female candidates selected to date for County Donegal in the Local Elections, with currently only 2 female candidates out of 29 in Donegal County Council.  According to Dr Adrian Kavanagh’s (Maynooth College) to date there are only 358 females selected or declared nationally (23.1 %),   so we have a long way to go to attain a participative democracy.

The question remains, what are the parties doing to encourage and support female candidates? Many parties have Equality Policies which look good on paper.  What obviously seems to be lacking is the will or the way to implement a fair deal for women.

Yours sincerely,

Finola Brennan,

5050 North West Group
NCCWN-Donegal Women’s Network
6 Tir Chonaill Street
Donegal Town
Co. Donegal
 
T:  074 9722790
E:  donwoment@eircom.net