ROI Women TD’s

Written by Administrator

The 2011 general election yielded a record number of women TDs, albeit seeing a very modest increase. 23 TDs out of 166 (13.8%) that sat in the 30th Dáil were women, the highest number in the history of the state. This placed Ireland in a global position of 84th in terms of female parliamentary representation. 25 women have been elected for the 31st Dáil, meaning that the next parliament will be 15.1% female. This will marginally push us up the world rankings to 79th place (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2011).

Parties	Percentage of females in 2007	Percentage of females in 2011
Fianna Fail	13.1%	14.7% (+1.6%)
Fine Gael	15.4%	14.3% (-1.1%)
Labour	22.0%	26.5% (+4.5%)
Green	25.0%	18.6% (-6.4%)
Sinn Fein	24.4%	19.5% (-4.9)
There were no women running for any of these parties in nine constituencies (21% of total). In the independents/others category, women made up 10.6% of candidates (-2.2%).

How did women fare in this election when the results are explored in detail? The average success rate for both male and female candidates was very similar, standing at 29.4% and 29.1%, respectively.

Fine Gael saw 11 women elected, representing 14.5% of total deputies. This is an increase of 6 on the number of women they had elected in 2007 and represents a percentage increase of 4.7%.

Labour had 8 women elected in this election, making up 21.6% of their incoming deputies.

This is a numerical increase of 1 on their figure for the last Dáil, although it actually represents a percentage decrease of 13.4%.With the election of Mary-Lou McDonald in Dublin Central and Sandra McLellan in Cork East, Sinn Féin was successful is going from having no women deputies to having two, representing 14.3% of their TDs.

-Source from Claire McGing, NUI Maynooth.

Last Updated on Thursday, 23 June 2011 14:35