Gender Quotas & Politics – candidate quotas can improve competency of candidates of both genders! #imaginebelfast15

Prof Yvonne Galligan introduced the topic of Gender Quotas at an Imagine!2015 Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics session up at Queen’s University earlier today. Looking across national parliaments in Europe, women make up >40% in Finland, Sweden, Belgium and Spain. The UK manages a shade over 20%, and Ireland just 15%. See the slides under this post. Yvonne looked at a four-stage journey from citizen to representative and the obstacles that face someone being eligible -> aspiring -> nominated …

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Gender quotas

Over on the Anti-Room group blog, Amanda posts about female political representation and gender quotas. She notes: Now we hear news that Irish female politicians as a group (all be it a very small one in comparison to their male counterparts) are not in favour of introducing quotas to ensure a greater number of women get into power. A very thorough article in today’s Irish Times by political correspondent Mary Minihan, found that of the 23 female TDs currently in …

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