gender

Soapbox: Disability, gender and sexual orientation policies hived off to Communities

Soapbox on May 27, 2016, 9:58 am

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Reprinted here with permission of Brian Barrington, a former SDLP advisor from his own Facebook page this morning… One of the decisions made when the Northern Ireland Executive was first established was to keep all aspects of equality policy in the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (OFMDFM). There were two reasons for this. First, because OFMDFM was the secretariat to the Executive. Therefore, any paper from a department going to the Executive could be scrutinised on …

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

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 12, 2015, 4:00 pm

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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 …

What Women Want: removing barriers to full participation in politics

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on February 9, 2014, 12:28 pm

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Labour Party NI are holding a women’s policy conference on 22 March in The Pavilion at Stormont. The all-day event – the same day as the Alliance Party conference – is free to attend and open to non-party members and men. Under the title of What Women Want? the organisers want to discuss “real solutions to barriers to full participation in politics”. In Bronagh Hinds’ chapter of Everyday Life After the Irish Conflict: The Impact of Devolution and Cross-Border Cooperation …

Tomorrow’s #DigitalLunch: Does positive discrimination work?

Mick Fealty on October 11, 2012, 9:08 am

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So, tomorrow’s #DigitalLunch asks: Does positive discrimination actually work? There are optimists like Shelley Horan (H/T Dearbhail)… But there are also some interesting challenges to laws that discriminate in favour of women or particular minorities… In Northern Ireland we’ve had the (albeit timebound) commitment to 50/50 recruitment policy to ensure a sea change in the make up of the policing service which was historically (if for divergent) reasons predominantly Protestant. In Texas Abigail Fisher is suing the University of Texas …

BelTel Poll: Women for Alliance and SDLP. Men for Sinn Fein. Unionists achieve balance.

Mick Fealty on June 13, 2012, 12:18 pm

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There’s other more fascinating material still coming out of the BelTel poll. Liam has some very interesting material on gender balance amongst the support for parties. Despite having the nearest to a balanced ticket and impressively promoted women to near the top, women are less likely to vote for Sinn Fein: Sinn Fein, eight of whose 29 MLAs are female, has a particular imbalance between male and female voters — 32% of those who intend to vote are men but …

Gender quotas

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on August 4, 2010, 5:40 pm

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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 …