Small Increase in Irish Women TDs

The new Irish Dail will be 15.1% female – up from 13.9% before the election. This is a increase of 2 women to 25, and has happened despite a drop in the level of women candidates and fears that there would also be a fall in the number of women elected.

Fine Gael, now the largest party, has 11 women TDs (14.4%), whilst the outgoing Fianna Fail, which suffered a crushing defeat, now has no women TDs at all.

8 of Labour’s 37 TDs are women – 21.6%. Both Fine Gael and Labour took some steps to ensure that there were a reasonable number of women candidates.

Sinn Fein, which won 14 seats, has 2 women (14.3%), whilst the Green Party lost all its TDs, including its only woman. 2 Independent women were elected, and 2 belonging to smaller parties.

Although this result is rather better than had been anticipated, it still keeps Ireland towards the bottom of the European league table, with only six EU countries - Slovakia (15.3%), Slovenia (14.4%), Cyprus (12.5%), Romania (11.4%), Hungary (9.1%) and Malta (8.7%) – having a lower percentage of women legislators.

At 22%, the UK now lies 12^th in the list of EU nations, ahead of Italy (21.3%) and France (18.9%) but behind the Netherlands (40.7%), Spain (36.6%) and Germany (32.8%).

It remains to be seen how many women are appointed to the new FineGael/Labour coalition cabinet.