Joint Committee on Gender Equality debate -
Thursday, 20 Oct 2022

Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed)

Chairman

I thank everyone for being here. Members have the option of being physically present in the committee room or joining the meeting via Microsoft Teams, as quite a number have, from their Leinster House offices but they may not participate from outside the parliamentary precincts. I ask members joining on Teams to mute their microphones when not making a contribution and to use the raise-hand function to indicate. All those present in the committee room are asked to exercise personal responsibility to protect themselves and others from the risk of contracting Covid-19.

Today we are considering the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality regarding leadership in politics, public life and the workplace. We are delighted to have representatives from three groups with us, the 30% Club, Women on Air and the National Traveller Women's Forum. I warmly welcome from the 30% Club, Ms Gillian Harford, country executive, and Ms Meliosa O’Caoimh, country chair; from Women on Air, Ms Roisin Duffy, chair, and Ms Pat Coyle, media trainer; and from the National Traveller Women's Forum, Ms Maria Joyce, co-ordinator. We may be joined by another representative from the National Traveller Women's Forum. I thank the witnesses for taking the time to attend.

Before we begin, I must read an important notice regarding parliamentary privilege. Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to the committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity in such a way as to make them identifiable. Participants who are giving evidence from a location outside parliamentary precincts are asked to note that the constitutional protections afforded to those participating from within parliamentary precincts do not extend to them. No clear guidance can be given on whether, or the extent to which, the participation is covered by absolute privilege of a statutory nature.

I will now invite the witnesses to make their opening statements before opening the floor to members for questions and answers. We look forward to digging into the key recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly under discussion today, namely, recommendations Nos. 20 to 25 on leadership in politics, public life and the workplace. I call Ms Harford to make her opening statement on behalf of the 30% Club.

Ms Gillian Harford

I thank the committee for the invitation today. My colleague and I represent the 30% Club, a global campaign supported by chairs and CEOs committed to greater gender balance at senior levels for better business outcomes. Our focus is on engaging chairs and CEOs, influencing progress at a national level and supporting a talent pipeline for sustainable progress. As a business-led body, we share a common goal with the Citizens' Assembly to see increased gender balance in all senior decision-making fora, whether commercial or State-led. We strongly believe that in the business arena, better and more sustainable progress is made when organisations are actively encouraged to be accountable for progress, particularly when the evidence supports better business outcomes. For example, when the 30% Club was established in Ireland in 2015, the percentage of women on ISEQ 20 boards was just under 12.5%. Based on the voluntary actions taken by those organisations, most of which are supporters of the 30% Club, together with the voluntary target approach adopted by Balance for Better Business in 2018, that percentage in 2022 now stands at just over 32%. Ireland moved from 17th place out of the 27 EU member states to 11th in 2021. This achievement reflected not just keeping pace with European counterparts primarily driven by quotas, but also overtaking them. In the latest European Women on Boards report, 50% of the Irish companies listed on the STOXX Europe 600 have a board gender balance above the European average. Critical to the talent pipeline, the Central Statistics Office, CSO, gender balance in business survey 2021 data show that almost 30% of senior executive posts were held by women, a figure well in advance of many of our European counterparts.

There is more to be done and progress is not consistent across every organisation and sector. Targets are preferable and a sustainable way to achieve gender balance and set out a floor for progress, whereas quotas are more likely to set a ceiling, with no incentive for extending beyond the mandatory requirement. When quotas were introduced for board membership were introduced in Norway in 2006, the number of women in executive roles reduced as organisations focused on board compliance. These figures have yet to recover.

Our research has identified that organisations that are more focused on voluntary gender balance as part of their business strategy have a focus that extends beyond the boardroom and moves equally into the early- and mid-career talent pipelines. If we are to prioritise changing the face of decision-making executive teams in a sustainable way, we need to focus on removing the barriers to progress for mid-career men and women in equal measure, and for all women. This is our most critical talent challenge. Quotas for boardroom representation will not drive change in this area. The current methodology applied by Balance for Better Business of extending targets to private companies is already starting to yield results and should be given time to demonstrate progress before quotas should be considered as the only option. We recognise, however, that there is a lack of data beyond listed organisations and we are supportive of initiatives to improve gender representation reporting, whether as part of gender pay gap, CSO data collection or otherwise, as the benefit of data is that we can track progress and pinpoint areas for action. Ultimately, what gets measured gets done.

On the additional recommendations under consideration, while we strongly welcome the focus on gender balance in competitive public processes for funding, we are less confident that applying a specific quota requirement as a prerequisite would drive real change. Instead, we ask that consideration be given to the requirement to include information on gender representation, targets and progress as part of an application process as a demonstration of action.

For recommendation No. 23, we are proud to count many State bodies within our supporter group. We believe State and semi-State bodies have the opportunity and responsibility to lead by example. We support the proposal that any form of family leave should be equally available to elected representatives in delivery of their paid responsibilities.

For recommendation No. 25, we believe workplaces should be encouraged, rather than required, to develop, resource, implement and monitor gender-neutral recruitment and promotion policies and practices. The introduction of a best-practice code around recruitment practices, as well as education programmes encouraging gender-neutral selection and promotion, would be more beneficial in supporting the range of scenarios faced in different sectors of industry, rather than a one-size-fits-all assumption. It would also facilitate the opportunity to change and grow as our understanding of best practice continues.

In business, we recognise the value of an integrated approach when we focus on diversity and inclusion, D and I, matters.

Gender equality is not a minority issue and, as such, it needs specific collaboration to focus on all women in terms of access to education, social policy, enterprise and jobs, rather than in a limited few areas. Until such time as women are equally advantaged in their roles within society and the workplace and as decision makers at the most senior echelons, we support the application of resources driving cross-government co-ordination of actions to improve gender equality issues in a more cohesive and effective way.

I thank the committee for its invitation.

Chairman

I now invite Ms Roisin Duffy to make her opening statement on behalf of Women on Air.

Ms Roisin Duffy

Women on Air greatly appreciates the opportunity to appear before the committee. Our core message is focused on the urgent need for data to inform and give context to the discussion on gender imbalance on the Irish airwaves. It is a first step.

When Dáil Éireann debated the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality in October last year, many Deputies commended the 45 excellent recommendations from the assembly. However, some also referred to a key obstacle, namely, the lack of live, continuous data evaluating the extent of gender inequality in public life. This is the elephant in the room.

In 2018, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland identified data collection and publication as key to the promotion of gender equality. The Minister with responsibility for equality, Deputy Roderic O’Gorman, acknowledged that such information was, to use his word, "vital”. International experience shows that it is this information - the whole picture revealed - that precipitates change and gives added urgency to initiatives like that laid out by the Citizens' Assembly. Data collection is also imperative as it yields the type of necessary, accurate information that allows for an appropriate, systemic response which can in turn be the subject of evidence-based evaluation. Yet, the paucity of such data here remains a key barrier to this type of action and evaluation. International research, as well as the simple evidence of our own ears, indicate that on-air gender balance remains a problem here. However, in the absence of serious data our conclusions will always be speculative.

It is important to note that there seems to have been an increase in the representation of women on air and a growing awareness of the issue. Since the data we have are limited and somewhat dated, it is difficult to ascertain the extent of progress, if any.

Women on Air is a voluntary group that was set up with the sole purpose of redressing the gender balance or imbalance on broadcast media. In recent years, our organisation has been engaged in practical ways in getting more women media-ready by offering a mentor-based training programme carried out by media professionals. It is a one-of-a-kind programme. We have run workshops here and abroad enabling women to have their voices heard. We are proud of the women we have trained, many of whom have become on-air regulars. We have supported this work with the establishment of a database of women contributors and experts for the use of journalists and media professionals. We have also staged events to raise consciousness around the under representation of women on the airwaves. While these actions have been welcomed and deemed entirely worthwhile by the women participants, they are ad hoc and contingent by nature, and have only served to make us all the more certain of the need for accurate and informed data as the basis for the necessary strategic planning that is required. It is as if we have been papering over the cracks when they need to be exposed and then filled.

International research, and the very limited Irish research available, strongly suggest that women are under-represented on air, both with respect to the number and nature of their contributions. This has serious implications for our democracy. As a people, as we all know, we are very much invested in the controversies and crises of our time. We at Women on Air have consistently argued that the first draft of public or social policy in Ireland is often thrashed out on the airwaves, particularly on talk radio programmes. Women make up over 50% of the Irish population - in fact, it is 51.49% at this point - yet this is not reflected on air. Women’s concerns, needs and experiences are not, therefore, informing this public debate sufficiently. For example, women account for the majority of carers in our society. When we neglect to give them a voice, we are silencing the voices not only of women but of children, the elderly and those with disabilities, women and men.

Women on Air believes a year long monitoring project, concentrating on a number of key high-audience programmes from the public and independent sectors, is essential to establish a true picture of female representation on air in Ireland. Crucially, more in-depth research would flow from that, giving us as a democracy a window into the many and complex issues that contribute to the problem, such as gender stereotyping, unconscious bias and the like. We understand at least one major broadcaster in Ireland is committed to the concept of data collection and monitoring on a bigger scale, but what is needed from all parties concerned is a firm commitment to turn aspiration into action.

I will now turn to another key concern for Women on Air, namely, the issue of gender quotas which Ms Harford of the 30% Club spoke eloquently about. Women on Air supports the concept of compulsory gender quotas for broadcast media, particularly broadcast media in receipt of public funds. The Citizens' Assembly cited the success of compulsory quotas for party candidates at general elections and recommended that they be extended to include all elections, including local, European and Seanad elections. The National Women’s Council of Ireland, NWCI, is running a campaign to bring in a 40% gender quota for the 2024 local elections to match the 40% quota that will be in place for the next general election. These female candidates are entitled to the same airspace as men but currently no mechanism exists to ensure they get that. This also applies to women in all the various spheres of Irish public and private life. The challenges involved are not insurmountable but if we continue to allow the status quo to persist, we seem to imply that women are less able than men, their views matter less and they are a minority rather than the majority they actually are.

As regards the issue of compulsory quotas, the approach needs to be incremental, starting with measurable targets which will serve as the impetus for the evolution and realisation of the desired quota. Simply put, we do not need a blunt instrument. Women consume and pay for publicly-funded media just as men do. They are entitled to hear their concerns, views and, most important, voices on air. Equally, seeing is believing. If women hear their own voices, it will encourage more to follow suit. The fundamental first step in all of this must be to establish statistically the level of under-representation through a year long data gathering process. It is well beyond time that we gather the data so that it, as well as women, can start doing the talking.

Chairman

That was a good finish. I invite Ms Maria Joyce to give her opening statement on behalf the National Traveller Women's Forum.

Ms Maria Joyce

I thank the Chair and, as with the other organisations, we welcome the opportunity to present to the committee on the key issues raised by the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality on leadership in politics, public life and the workplace.

In advance of today’s meeting, I reviewed the recommendations of the report again. They are solid, strong recommendations which, if implemented, could increase the number of women in politics. I say "could" because they need to be implemented. Unfortunately, they would not address the needs of Traveller women and other minoritised women and would serve to further marginalise us.

As we outlined in our submission, Traveller women experience significant exclusion from decision-making and wider political processes due to discrimination and marginalisation. There is a real need for Traveller women to have an opportunity to participate in spaces of power and decision-making. This includes the need to value our expertise and knowledge in political and broader public spheres and to ensure those who hold public office are held to account for racist and sexist comments about Travellers.

Earlier this year, we published the report, Different Paths, Shared Experiences: Ethnic Minority Women and Local Politics in Ireland.

The research was prepared by Professor Pauline Cullen and Mr. Shane Gough. We collaborated with Akina Dada wa Africa, AkiDwA, and the link to the research is available in the submission we made to the committee. Professor Cullen and Mr. Gough also made a submission to this committee outlining key aspects of the research and what needs to be addressed. The report calls for women candidate quotas for Irish elections to incorporate a quota for ethnic minority women to help tackle the issue of our under-representation in elected office. Under-representation is an understatement. We do not have Traveller women at national level in politics other than Senator Eileen Flynn, the Taoiseach's nominee, which was greatly welcomed. She is doing a fantastic job and we continue to wish her well but we need to make greater strides.

The research shows that for Traveller and other minoritised women campaigning and canvassing were found to be a mixed experience, positive in some respects but at times discouraging. Experiences of abuse ranged significantly from racism and sexism online and offline, to sustained in-person racist and sexist harassment, abuse and intimidation. The minoritised women who took part in the research shared experiences of exclusion from electoral politics at the same time as they engaged in essential political work in building our own communities.

For Traveller women, community activism was more likely to be with our own community with less involvement in majority community organisations. This work is less recognised as leadership or political work and is not usually where political parties look to when recruiting candidates, and when I say less recognised, not by Traveller women or the community in terms of their leadership roles, their advocacy and their political and policy work in various consultative committees in relation to Traveller policy issues at local, regional and national levels. The research indicates that the range of current interventions to increase the number of women in local politics will increase gender parity there, but will not deliver the change required for minoritised women to access local politics, such as the issue of Traveller political participation, which remains the issue hiding in plain sight. Increasing Traveller women’s inclusion in local and national politics will require confronting the sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination in public life.

The report makes many recommendations across a range of areas, including: nested quotas, which I mentioned before, reserved seats, linking current State funding to parties to include a requirement to diversify their membership and candidate lists and to include ethnic minorities with gender parity in the Taoiseach’s Seanad nominees and for resources to be made available to achieve this.

Specifically on nested quotas, we want to see the inclusion of those from 2023 when the current national gender quotas for political parties increase from 30% to 40%. We would also call for the inclusion of nested ethnic quotas in any introduction of gender quotas at local political level going forward. We think it is essential to bring them in from the beginning as opposed to trying to stitch them in afterwards which is always much more difficult to do.

Before I finish, I would like to reflect again on the recommendations that the committee is deliberating on and to ask what the limits are in terms of the committee's ambition for women in politics in Ireland. We want the committee to push further and produce work that has the scope to make the Irish political landscape much more diverse than it is today. We need the committee's recommendations to specifically name Traveller women to ensure equality of outcomes for Traveller women from the work that this committee will produce. While we recognise that Traveller ethnicity in the Dáil was a significant issue in 2017 when it was recognised, there continues to be significant barriers to healthcare, adequate and culturally appropriate accommodation, equality of outcomes from education and meaningful work for Traveller women and girls in this country.

Chairman

I thank Ms Joyce and the witnesses for keeping so much to the time and for being so concise. I really appreciate that. I should say that we heard from AkiDwA in our hearings. I invite colleagues to indicate. As Senator Higgins has to leave early, she asked to be brought in first.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

Given the limited time, I will speak to two issues. First, I really welcome the idea, especially at local level, of looking to how we can design either the quotas and any other incentives in a way that look to represent the diversity of women and the diversity of those who are affected by issues at local level. I am noting those points on local political participation. The National Traveller Women's Forum is often called on to input into lots of processes at lots of levels. I wonder if more of an effort needs to be made to have a more active system of seeking the input of Travellers rather than leaving it to Traveller organisations and representative organisations to remind us that we need to have policies that work for everyone in our society and for Travellers and Traveller women. I am thinking of a range of policies. We are not just thinking of policies that are specifically targeted but of general policies - for example, health policy and to check if it works for everyone in our society. Looking to some of the other areas we have looked at, such as care or social protection policies, I wonder to what extent Ms Joyce thinks more needs to be done to resource civil society organisations, such as her organisation, to engage but also to build in the questions in terms of automatically policy-proofing, that is, that there is a more active role for Departments and public bodies and that they seek relevant input into their policies.

I also agree with Ms Joyce on comments that are racist and discriminatory. We used to have a protocol around the commitment to no-hate speech, which parties and candidates used to sign up to. I wonder if Ms Joyce has thoughts on whether that needs to be revived and strengthened.

As I understand it, the 30% Club came about it in the context of when a 40% quota for women on boards was being looked at as an EU directive. I will be honest and say that while I think it is good to have good practice and for everybody to seek to be good examples, if we have that good practice, rather than that being used as an inspiration, that should be pushing more ambition. In regard to an incremental process of some good practice being used as an argument, unfortunately it seems from the opening statement that it is being used as an argument against regulation or against having proper quotas. It stated that we should see how it all goes before we move to quotas and at another point it talked about encouraging rather than requiring. We have waited a very long time to have any progress in this area, or even a demand for progress.

The 30% Club in the UK at least - I do not know about Ireland - came into being when a quite strong 40% legislative measure was being discussed. I hope to be reassured on leading the way in terms of good practice and peer support around good practice. That should be encouraging of having good practices and making the case for why it is a good thing to have good practices. That can be done while encouraging those harder regulatory measures and perhaps building a greater constituency of support for new and better laws. Could the witnesses comment on that?

Chairman

I thank Senator Higgins. The questions were directed to Ms Joyce from the National Traveller Women's Forum and to Ms Harford from the 30% Club. I invite Ms Joyce to respond first.

Ms Maria Joyce

I thank Senator Higgins for her questions. On her question on being called on in terms of spaces of policy to try to inform and shape them, I absolutely agree on the point she made on building in the questions when research or policy is being developed. For example, for four years I sat on the National Strategy for Women and Girls 2017-2020, which came to an end last year.

Numerous times throughout the life of that strategy, various pieces of research and studies were presented by different Departments, whether on the economy, gender equality, pay, employment or pensions. At no point were Traveller women or other ethnic minority women, including Roma women, mentioned across all of that research. After each presentation was given over those four years, I asked what the situation was for Traveller women. They were not enough for it to be warranted, or they did not see the need. That is why it is so important. It is not just about Traveller policy naming the specifics around Traveller women. Wider gender policy in research and policy development needs to explicitly ask those question while also resourcing and supporting local and national organisations in the context of gender. Collaboration and working in solidarity with wider mainstream groups is really important. We need those groups to pick up on this as well. We do not need them to speak for us, but we need them to work with us, supporting and picking up on the issues. Much needs to be done in relation to those wider policy spaces because we are excluded from them. Our voice is not there. Those questions need to be stitched in and mechanisms need to be found to have us at the table as well. That is incredibly important.

On the racist and discriminatory comments, I agree with bringing back that protocol in terms of signing up to the incitement to hatred legislation. The incitement to hatred legislation needs to deliver protections for Traveller and Roma women and the wider Traveller community in general. Strong, clear recommendations in relation to that need to be at the core of the incitement to hatred legislation. When an elected official, in either the Seanad and the Dáil, makes racist or discriminatory statements, they need to be held to account. Apologies are all well and good, and they are welcome and they need to be made, but it needs to go further than that. There needs to be consequences in political parties when their members make racist and discriminatory comments in relation to Travellers or other ethnic minorities, including Roma. There needs to be consequences and serious penalties.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

I forgot to ask a question to the Women on Air group. I am one of those who benefitted from the really good training and work that Women on Air has done in the past. I remember from research the women's council did many years ago that it is not just around getting access but it is also around the question of what women are asked to do when they are given space in media and broadcasting. I remember research, which is possibly outdated now, from a number of years ago which found that women were very often asked to talk about their experiences, while men were asked to explain what was happening. There was that kind of qualitative difference in terms of how women were being asked to react, to talk about their experiences and to say how they felt about something while in the areas of analysis and explanatory work a disproportionate number of men were seen. Will the witness expand a little bit further around that qualitative dimension of the importance of having not just greater representation but greater representation in different ways in media?

Chairman

We try to put a time limit of eight minutes on each exchange to ensure as many members as possible can get in. I will ask Ms Harford to respond to Senator Higgins's comment. I will come back to Women on Air when we have heard from Deputy Paul McAuliffe.

Ms Gillian Harford

I thank Senator Higgins for her question. I fully appreciate her position. It is one I get presented with on a regular basis. When we talk about voluntary targets, we are very glad that it is seen as inspirational but that is not the position in which we talk about them. We talk about them in terms of being an absolute requirement for responsible and sustainable business in Ireland. This message is reinforced by employees, by investors and by the wider stakeholder group. We are all in agreement that we need to go beyond the level we are at but we see it as a good opportunity to think about how we get there.

As the Senator rightly said, the EU directive was in discussion for a very long time. It has only come to fruition recently and when the directive talks about 40%, it talks about 40% of non-executives but 33% across the full board. In terms of the ISEC 20, we have already got there.

Our challenge with quotas is that they only apply to a very small number of organisations. These are typically listed organisations, which is a small market in Ireland in terms of employers. We also have the advantage in Ireland, unlike some of our European counterparts, that we did not jump to quotas a number of years ago. We are still on a learning curve. We have the opportunity to see how other European states have progressed.

In our submission, we talked about Norway. Eight years after Norway introduced its laws on quotas at board level, there were no female CEOs in the country's 60 largest companies. There was no data to demonstrate that board quotas had achieved anything in terms of senior executive progress for women, of higher pay or better conditions for women throughout the pipeline. In fact, a number of Norwegian companies de-listed in order to meet the quota. Alternatively, they took women out of the executive world into the board world and many executives filled a number of positions which impacted further down the pipeline.

We are not saying quotas are not an option but we are saying they are the last option. We really want Irish business to do this in a very sustainable way. We would like to think that companies on the ISEC 20 have already committed to that. We have seen quite a number of our larger organisations already exceed 40% across their full board against 33% in the EU directive. We also welcome the fact that Ireland is looking to the position in the EU because that is where we compete. However, many European countries that have not had quotas and have not had targets are very far behind the Irish experience and we see the directive as being really important in terms of raising the playing field where we are already starting to show progress.

Please do not underestimate our views in terms of them being anything other than all of us looking for the right result at the end of the day. We would like this done in a sustainable way. A quota can be met today but how will the quota be met in five or ten years if we are not working within industry to build the pipeline? We believe in organisations stepping up and being required to be accountable. This could be through what might be described as soft quotas through balance for better business. Alternatively, it might be set target in terms of how they go about it. We believe these strategies would bring better and more sustainable results for Irish women in the voice of business.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

It is fascinating to follow this discussion. This committee is starting to look at what beyond quotas will look like. The question of what happens when 50% or 50 plus one is reached needs to be considered. We are still a long way off that in many places but it is about that idea of sustainability. I was at the unveiling of a portrait of Kathleen Clarke, the first woman Lord Mayor of Dublin City two weeks ago. Hers is the first portrait of a woman to be placed in City Hall, which is quite breathtaking, when you think about it. When my daughter came into the chamber one day she said to me that there were no portraits of women on the wall. There is that whole great movement of women on walls and so on. This has an impact and the idea of leadership is probably the least tangible of all of the recommendations. It is harder to get your hands around it but it is really important, so I am 100% committed to it and to the issue of quotas at the general election.

What I would like to ask about is the practicality of quotas and balance on air and how we do that over a longer period. For example, I really welcome maternity leave for women in local government. That Bill is really important as are some of the work-life balance improvements we have brought in.

We need to keep women over more than one term. I am not as good a Deputy as somebody who has been here for two or three terms. I was certainly a better councillor during my second term than my first term. On Dublin City Council, the Social Democrats, the Green Party and Fianna Fáil have a majority of women. I worry that a strict quota might mean we need male quotas. The difficulty with that is that a quota will be met. I am not advocating for a male quota, as the legislation already does that but what I am saying is that women need to be empowered over two terms. We cannot let them face an artificial barrier at the end of their first five years because of their gender. It would be perverse. We need to look at how we do that. It needs to be broader than one local authority and we need to do it across the whole country. There are local authorities with no women. Offaly County Council, for example, has no woman councillor, which is bizarre. We need to give a little thought to how a local election gender cap would apply. We have had that discussion here. We had it with the Taoiseach last week as well.

More supports are definitely needed for parents and for those impacted by childcare, male and female, at local authority level. We insist on it being a part-time position, although it is far from it. There are always going to be calls on childcare needs in that balance. We need to do more than just gender. We need to have the supports.

My question is for Ms Duffy and it touches on the same point. In the last week or two we have had much discussion around editorial independence on radio programmes and so on. How do we ensure that we have editorial independence but also see the idea of balance in programmes? Twenty years ago, there were programmes, like Gay Byrne's and Gerry Ryan's programmes, where 95% of the contributors might have been female, but all of the radio hosts were male. How do we make sure that we have that balance for producers, researchers and editors, but by the same token see the output of more women in the public eye?

Ms Roisin Duffy

Can the Deputy clarify what he means by editorial control?

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

For example, would Ms Duffy like to see a prescribed quota on radio panels?

Ms Roisin Duffy

I do not believe any programme sets out to have a panel of nine or ten men. It has happened, and it happens. It is quite a complex situation. As we do not have data that explains to us the extent of the problem, so it is very hard to fix it. These days most organisations want to have a mixture of men and women. You would go for 50-50 and try to do the best you can in that regard.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I agree on the data and that should be a given. It is something we should take up directly. How do we prescribe the outcome while at the same time not getting into the nitty gritty?

Ms Roisin Duffy

The whole point of this and one of the first rules of thumb of gender balance in media, like dealing with contributors or experts the Deputy spoke about, is that there be no tokenism. Tokenism is completely and utterly damaging for any organisation. However, quite often there is more than one good expert who can be on a panel, and sometimes you have to dig deeper to find the two, three or four other people who can do the job just as well. For example, if you are in a situation where you are dealing with Brexit and most of the commentators or experts are male, then there has to be a red flag at programme level to say that is not sustainable and there needs to be a deep dive to find the people we need.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

In Ms Duffy's experience, do those red flags go up? Do those red lights go on?

Ms Roisin Duffy

Obviously, I am not here to speak about the organisation I work for. I want to make that very clear.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

Of course, but in general, in Ms Duffy's experience, does it happen?

Ms Roisin Duffy

Certainly I can tell the Deputy of the BBC's experience here. I refer to the 50:50 Project. I do not know if the Deputy is aware of what it is. A guy called Ros Atkins ran a programme called "Outside Source" and after some research into the BBC around gender, which was not particularly brilliant for women, he decided to look at his own programme. It was a BBC World programme and dealt with experts across the globe. He basically decided to count the people appearing on the programme, and he discovered to his horror that the percentage of women across a week was significantly less than men. Just the idea of raising the consciousness of that among his team on the programme he presented meant the number improved because they realised that if they had four men yesterday, they needed to do something about that today. They started to look for good people. When it came to areas where they did not have a female they could go to, then the researcher or somebody else on the programme would take responsibility for finding people and creating a database so that those people were there. That is what they started to do. It is very practical, and it works.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

The collection of data itself is the driver without having specific prescriptions in place.

Ms Roisin Duffy

I agree. I think the collection of data even at basic programme level heightens consciousness for everybody and it immediately changes it. When that programme, "Outside Source," started in 2017, they discovered that 30% of those on air through the week were women. That went up to 52%, but crucially the reach of the programme expanded by another 25%. It simply makes good sense, and what they looked at became deeper and more interesting. That is what happens. That embellished and helped their own democracy.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I think the Chair would agree that is also the experience of the Seanad. Now that we have more women in the Chamber, it has broadened the discussion. It has also happened at local authority level.

Chairman

It has not happened yet in the Dáil, but you are right. It was certainly evident to me having served three terms in the Seanad. In the fourth term, there were so many more women. There is a significant difference in culture and so on.

Ms Roisin Duffy

Might I just take the opportunity to ask that if you endorsed and put your shoulder behind a proper year-long monitoring programme that showed the extent of the problem, how much change would that drive?

Chairman

That is very good, and it is in line with the citizens' assembly recommendation No. 31 about the annual publication of details of monitoring by media organisations.

Ms Roisin Duffy

Totally.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I have a further question for Ms Duffy. Has that been raised with the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, specifically?

Ms Roisin Duffy

I am sorry, which issue?

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

The specific issue of the year-long monitoring.

Ms Roisin Duffy

No, we have not directly raised it with the Minister. We thought that we would use this as a launch pad and give the committee a scoop on it.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

That is something we should bring to his attention.

Ms Roisin Duffy

We have been saying it and I have written a number of articles for newspapers making exactly that point.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

Yes, it is a really good argument.

Ms Roisin Duffy

We continue to say the same thing and that is why we are saying it today. It is the most important piece. Senator Higgins spoke about information around gender stereotyping and why women do not step up, because a lot of women do not step up. Ms Coyle, as our trainer, could tell the committee a lot more about that. It is a complex scenario but there is not a pile of men sitting somewhere saying they do not want women to participate. That is not it. It is much more complex than that. However, the information from a monitoring project would lead to research and that data would start to drive change. That is fundamental.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

The point on tokenism is really important too. It is something that we really struggle with in politics. Even with a quota system, we still have to challenge that. I imagine it is also why the witnesses did not bring a man with them today to provide a bit of gender balance on the panel.

Ms Roisin Duffy

That is why quotas can be a blunt instrument, but we still think they are very important.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I agree.

Chairman

Thank you, Deputy McAuliffe. I am conscious that we are overtime but Ms Duffy might just want to address Senator Higgins's last questions. I said we would come back to them. I know Ms Joyce wants to come in.

Ms Roisin Duffy

It really comes to the same point. What Senator Higgins said is that there is anecdotal evidence that suggests, but it is simply a suggestion, that in some cases the man becomes the authoritative voice. This kind of thing was shown in the BBC when it looked at its statistics. It is unconscious, but quite often the woman is giving you the experience of something and the man is saying what the reality is. However, we do not have the research. If we had the monitoring, it would lead to the research and then we would know the extent of that here. We suspect it is pretty high, and that women deal a lot more in soft social science and softer storylines than finance, taxation and legal, but again we do not have the evidence.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

After the Taoiseach being here last week, we might do it on an all-island basis through the shared island unit.

Ms Roisin Duffy

Absolutely.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

That might be one route.

Chairman

We might in further engagement drill down to how that monitoring project might work. We might come back to that.

I am conscious both Ms Joyce and Ms Harford want to speak, and I have still to call Deputy Cronin. I might ask Ms Joyce to speak briefly and go back to the 30% Club following Deputy Cronin.

Ms Maria Joyce

On those points around data and the need for monitoring and to go beyond anecdotal evidence, critical within that is the need for an ethnic identifier. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, is looking at equality proofing in the context of data but if we do not have some form of ethnic identification within that, we will still not be able to measure the piece.

Before the Minister, Deputy McAuliffe, leaves,-----

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I am not a Minister yet.

Ms Maria Joyce

Sorry.

Chairman

Ms Joyce is promoting the Deputy.

Ms Maria Joyce

I am, indeed. In response to the Deputy, we are a while off having to worry about white male privilege. We will not need quotas for quite a while for men in politics.

To get back to my point, the ethnic identifier in data is important. My core point is that we cannot have equality for one group of women while other groups and communities of women are lagging behind. For Traveller women, right across all of the areas, there are stark inequalities, whether it be health, accommodation, education or employment. In all the areas the committee is examining, there are considerable deficits as well in terms of what Senator Higgins spoke about earlier and the care aspect. Unless we can measure for all women and measure impact, we will fail those groups of women in the context of that. I wanted to make that point on the data and the importance of it in measuring and monitoring for all women, including Traveller, Roma and other ethnic minority women.

Chairman

I thank Ms Joyce and Deputy McAuliffe.

Ms Gillian Harford

This is a final comment to follow on from Ms Duffy and Deputy McAuliffe's point about sustainability. One of the important aspects for us in terms of the area that Women on Air is focusing on, and that Ms Joyce is focusing on as well, is around how do we make sure that the recommendations work for the future generations. Whether it is recommendations on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, career guidance, women in business or women in family, much of that is dependent on what young girls see today. When young girls look at media, they need to see themselves. They need to see their voice. They particularly need to see themselves in higher value roles and making stronger contributions because that is the most important thing that, we believe, needs to come out of the assembly. It is not only the women of today that we are trying to solve for. It is the children who are there today, particularly girls, who need to see themselves as equal contributors. We would be supportive of the proposals that Women on Air are considering today.

Chairman

I thank Ms Harford. That is great and helpful.

Deputy Réada Cronin

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Cathaoirleach. I thank our guests for all their presentations.

When she was an MEP, Senator Lynn Boylan commissioned an independent report into gender equality in the media sector. The Senator's report found that while 68% of graduates of media and journalism were female, they were severely underrepresented in journalism on the radio, in newspapers, etc.

It is important that we remember we are talking about diversity in the media and in society as well, and women are not one homogenous group. There is diversity. We have different interests. We have different backgrounds. We have different incomes. I would like to talk about women with disabilities, the women from less well-off backgrounds, older women and Traveller women. Certainly, one rarely hears the voice of a Traveller on the national media unless he or she is there to apologise for something someone else did.

I have listened to a fair few podcasts. Often I would be busy and I would be trying to catch up on housework or whatever at the same time, or cooking. I listen to Ms RoseMarie Maughan a lot on podcasts and she is amazing. I might be busy but I will sit down if she is on and listen to her because she is enthralling to listen to. Ms Anne Marie Quilligan also features a lot on podcasts, in particular, the Echo Chamber Podcast, which is a left-wing podcast. They are really interesting as well when one looks at what Dr. Sindy Joyce has achieved in Limerick. I have heard Mr. Martin "Beanz" Warde. He has been on RTÉ a bit recently but there are not enough Traveller women on.

Given that we are in a cost-of-living crisis, diversity of women in the media is important. I am certainly sick of hearing well-off men telling us about economising. It is a bit like teaching your granny how to suck eggs because less well-off people know well how to economise. It is important that there is diversity in those women on air.

Chairman

I thank Deputy Cronin. There were questions for Ms Joyce and Ms Duffy there.

Ms Maria Joyce

I could not agree more. There are huge strides to be made in the inclusion of Traveller and other ethnic minority women, including Roma women, in the media in this sphere. It is not only about responding to remarks that are made, something that has come out into the public domain or research specific to Travellers being launched. Traveller women have so much to offer across the range of debate that takes place in the media. It is about creating the conditions and the supports and ensuring that resources and supports are there but it is also about media outlets addressing it. Travellers have been targets of the media in a derogatory or discriminatory way. It is about media outlets themselves looking at their own practice and, as was said, needing to dig deeper as to what they need to do to ensure that on all their platforms, there is diversity of women. However, on all their platforms, they need to look at what that diversity means in terms of women and that it is not only one group of women, but all women. On the contributions of the speakers Deputy Cronin referred to, when Ms RoseMarie Maughan, Ms Anne Marie Quilligan and Mr. Martin Warde are on, you are enthralled by them. They are there and they have something to say about what affects them and the issues of everyday life in Ireland but they are not getting the space from media outlets.

Resourcing and supports in that space in the media need to go in to make that happen. Targets and quotas need to be set because sometimes they are all that will create that bit of shift in relation to something happening. On the will, in the political sphere, I mean the political will. In terms of the media, as I said, I mean the will of those who can do that and make those decisions to include and diversify their panels and how they broadcast. Looking at ways and routes in, internships in the media to try to look at underrepresented groups would be an important piece targeting young Travellers and other groups. I refer to specific measures to address those deficits that are there.

Ms Roisin Duffy

When Women on Air set up the training programme, it was a practical approach. We have trained from all sections of society. Dr. Sindy Joyce is one of our graduates. Right across the board, from people in business to people in direct provision, voluntary groupings, politicians such as new people coming into these Houses, we show them how to navigate the media landscape. The training programme is kind of special because it is made up of media professionals. For example, we have mentors.

Mentors can be former editors of programmes in a number of organisations, such as Virgin, formerly TV3, and RTÉ. They can be people with a media background who have produced programmes over years, who understand how it works. For each person who is trained, they are given a mentor for six months. The idea is not that that person is called by the trainee to ask if they should wear nail polish on a particular day. It is a case of the person having something to say and finding out where that might be best placed, what is the best way of getting that information on air, what the programme might be and getting some suggestions. That is done after a weekend. Unfortunately, it has to be a weekend because we are a voluntary grouping. We beg and steal rooms and people. We have a great trainer in Ms Coyle. Over those three days, every single person goes through everything. They learn how to pitch what they want to say and that is turned into a fearsome interview with Ms Coyle, who does the radio interview with people. That is critiqued as a group. The group basically almost empowers itself. It becomes a unit in its own right. Then it moves on to television, with a proper cameraman, who comes in, responds to all their concerns and does the interview. That is critiqued again. All the while, we are trying to give people the tools to do the job. Then we give them a mentor to help them along that route. It is all voluntary. That is how it works.

We have a small amount of money from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, that helps us with some of it. We are very happy to have the support of the BAI in that. That is what we do. What we need is for more women to say that they need our training because they have something to say and they need some help with that. We do the best we can. Obviously, our resources are limited. Again, it comes down to getting the data and doing the research across the board. That is taken out of our hands. We cannot afford to do it. We do not have the money or the expertise. The committee does. That information will engender change. I have no doubt of that.

Chairman

It is really interesting and good to hear the practical detail of how the course is run. Well done. I call on Deputy Carroll MacNeill. Perhaps Ms Harford can come back in after that.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

I thank the witnesses for coming in. I admire their work in totally different ways. I am delighted to see them here. Ms Joyce and I previously saw each other at the parliamentary forum. We were speaking again at yesterday's meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice regarding places of detention. Deputy Bacik and I co-chair the penal reform group within the Oireachtas.

I was struck by something Ms Joyce said a while back about how Traveller women were just invisible until the end of the conversation. I was in Limerick recently and we spoke about the particular difficulty that the Irish Penal Reform Trust, IPRT, has examined. It has identified the particular prejudice that faces Traveller women in prisons, the massive over-representation of Traveller women in prisons, and the particularly difficult circumstances that many of them have experience to end up there. I do not mean to start something negative, but it was only on Tuesday. It is just that it did not come up at all. I was thinking about Ms Joyce and what she had said at the parliamentary forum. In a different, much more positive way, I was thinking, just as Ms Joyce was speaking there, that I cannot remember the last time I saw a Traveller woman on TV. I do not know whether it is that I do not watch much TV or that I have been missing something. In the broader cultural discussion, I just have not seen it. It is really important what Ms Joyce has highlighted today.

I ask the witnesses from Women on Air to forgive me because I have been in and out between this meeting and another committee meeting. I would like to understand a little bit more deeply why the witnesses think there are so few women on air. To the witnesses from the 30% Club, one of the things that really concerns me is not so much board representation but executive management representation and women at that level. That is where the decisions are made and where money is to be made. Also, crucially, that is where culture is set, at senior management levels. Those are my two questions, to begin with.

Chairman

I will go to the witnesses from the 30% Club first, because I am conscious that Ms Harford did not get in on the last round. She may wish to comment on some of the earlier exchanges as well as Deputy Carroll MacNeill's question.

Ms Gillian Harford

One of the tenants of the 30% Club is always focusing on changing the system, rather than feeling that we always have to change the women. In addition to the great work that Ms Duffy does in training, we encourage senior women to make themselves available for comment. However, there is an onus on the media outlets to support the women being commented on in terms of the content that they present, rather than how they are dressed or their accents. We really see women being more likely to step up, which might partially answer the Deputy's question, when they see the media outlets acting as allies for women as expert speakers, rather than as tokenism. As I said, when you see somebody stepping out of their comfort zone and commenting on sport, for example, and being criticised on social media for their accent, it is great when the media outlet itself steps up and says it supports them as an expert. That encourages more women to get involved.

On the Deputy's point about women at executive level, we would support her view absolutely. Our concern is that countries that have focused on quotas, and quotas on boards have not done anything at all to improve the lot of women. That is why, within the 30% Club, we like to go on the basis of targets. Organisations that are accountable for targets almost have no choice but to look at executive level, because that is what they need to feed the pipeline. When the 30% Club started in the UK in 2010, it only focused on boards and many of the chapters around the world did the same. When it came to Ireland in 2015, we saw that as a serious gap, mainly because we have a small number of listed boards. We extended the remit in Ireland and said we wanted to focus on a minimum of 30% at C-suite as well. The 30% Club globally has now retrofitted that into its initiative, but it has seen where we have focused on it in Ireland. It is absolutely the way to go. Decisions on governance and oversight are made at board level, but the critical strategic decisions, the culture of an organisation and the diversity approach in terms of customers, employees and procurement and wider stakeholders happen at the C-suite table. We believe it is really important that women are equally represented. It is more important that they are represented at that table. That is what we work with Irish organisations to encourage.

Ms Maria Joyce

It is really important to have the targets and the quotas, and to be naming Traveller women specifically in them. Unless we specifically name Traveller women, sometimes the issues impacting them will not be addressed. We need ethnic quotas in gender quotas. We also need, within those nested ethnic quotas, targets for Traveller women. Otherwise, political parties will not go the extra mile that they need to in ensuring the efforts are being made by the parties and the resources and time being put into it. The political and cultural shift that needs to change within the political parties and the State will not happen unless we have the naming of Traveller women specifically in the context of quotas and targets. As the Deputy said, there is over-representation of Traveller women in prison, while we have under-representation across all of the issues we have discussed today. That does not happen by accident.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

Not at all.

Ms Maria Joyce

Research done by the University of Limerick that was published just a few months ago showed that the culture of policing and the criminal justice system in this country is discriminatory in terms of the racism experienced by Travellers. For Travellers, racism in policing and racial profiling all lead to greater numbers in prison, just like every other ethnic minority across the world is over-represented in prison systems. Also, much of that, in the context of women, is short sentences. They are imprisoned for fines. We have legislation in this country that prohibits judges from giving custodial sentences for fines.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

Yes.

Ms Maria Joyce

Yet, we are finding that there are Traveller women in our prison system on short sentences. It makes no sense whatsoever for women to go to prison on short sentences. Family life is entirely disrupted because they are primary carers.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

I totally agree.

Ms Maria Joyce

The women are going to prison for fines when judges should be ruling differently. Again, it is an example of the systemic racism in the context of our judiciary as well.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

I completely agree. I came out of Limerick and went to straight to a journalist to try to highlight those figures. It has been published in the Limerick Post. I also raised them in the Dáil with the Taoiseach. I did it for exactly that reason. I completely agree with Ms Joyce. Apologies for cutting across the witness.

Chairman

I thank Ms Joyce. She made very strong points.

Ms Roisin Duffy

There are an awful lot of reasons women do not step up to microphones. Something we have found a lot is that it is an issue of confidence or feeling that they do not know enough. They could have two PhDs on the subject but they still feel that they do not know enough. If I may, I might ask Ms Coyle to give a deeper dive into that because she does the training and therefore is privy to the conversations with the women we do train where a lot of this is discussed.

Ms Pat Coyle

Ms Duffy has made a very good point. That is exactly the case that I have found with women in any area of the expertise they have. All the women whom I have worked with have plenty to say but their confidence level is much lower when it comes to media. They say they need to work this out and to do more research. Without being stereotypical, a man will wing it more. I have been told by people in business, academia or whatever organisation that if there are a lot of men there the men tend to say "The man will do that" and they promote the man. It is a very good question because that is the kind of thing we want to look at if we are going to respond to this in the round. It is not just a case of increasing the quotas, we must look at what issues Traveller women face when they come on air or they are asked to do something. There are issues we do not even think about, like transport or whatever else. We just assume people can do certain things but they might not be able to do it that way. That is what surprised me a lot when I started listening to women – it is the issue of who promotes them or who pushes them, which happens very little. If someone gives a talk and there are men and women in the audience, when they call for questions, how many men's hand will go up for questions before a woman's? It will be a good while. This bring me back to the point from the 30% Club, which is very important. It is that the more woman we can get on air, modelling, the more that will break down as well because people think they can do it too. "If she did that, I can do it." There is a knock-on effect, in particular in the whole area of the sciences and science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, but also across the board.

It was said that women get criticised for what they wear or sound like. I produced radio and TV programmes myself. I remember that it was important for a woman to lower her voice because it was said that people did not want to hear a squeaky voice. That was almost accepted. Some people, including me, in the media got training to lower their voices. I love the fact that there are one or two women on air – I am sure members know them – whose voices are higher, younger and more vibrant. It is great. It now means we do not have to go with the lowering our voice thing, but even something as simple as that is important. The unconscious level of bias and sexism is there and even women themselves do not realise that they are suffering from it until they come together, sit down and talk. That is why it is important to take a multi-strata approach to doing this and to get all the information so that we can respond to it on many different levels.

Ms Maria Joyce

It goes beyond confidence for some groups of women. We cannot take away some of the negativity that is experienced by some groups of women, including Traveller women, when it comes to the media. If someone has constantly been on the receiving end of that, it does make it more difficult to try to engage in those spaces. At times we come in, and it is at the point where we have to defend ourselves, as opposed to being invited in to speak about wider issues that impact on us, not just as Traveller women, but as women in Irish society. That is very important.

The final point I will add to that whole piece is the online media and hatred and licence to just put anything in there. Even if we look at positive articles that are written in the print media, the amount of commentary in response that is derogatory, negative and racist is unbelievable. The online backlash into personal lives is a very significant issue as well.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

If anyone understands that, it might be us. We know.

Ms Melíosa O'Caoimh

If I could make one brief point, yesterday I had reason to meet a group of 12-year-olds at a school in Ringsend. There was not an ounce of lack of confidence in the room. I asked what they would all be when they grew up. The sky was the limit. There is no doubt that something happens between 12 and being grown up that is knocking women down. It is partly about visibility and seeing examples. Ms Harford's point that you can be what you can see is key in this regard and any help to enable that to improve will pay dividends in time.

Chairman

I thank Ms O’Caoimh. We have had hearings on stereotypes in education. The secondary school period certainly seems to be a very difficult issue.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

As we see more and more women in different positions, I feel it should not be their responsibility to be in their job and to also be responsible for everything to do with women. There must be a point at which it is simply acceptable to just do the job without discussing why they are doing it or the fact that they are doing it while being a woman or anything else. Just be "the politician" instead of "the woman politician" or be "the CEO" instead of "the woman CEO" and say “No” to that sort of engagement and for that to be an acceptable feminist perspective as well.

Chairman

I thank Deputy Carroll MacNeill. We hear her. As there are no other colleagues indicating, I will intervene myself. I thank everyone for the fascinating discussion we have had. I have a question for each group.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

Will there be a second round after your contribution, Chair?

Chairman

Yes. We have time if the witnesses have time.

Could Ms Duffy from Women on Air elaborate on the year-long monitoring project and how that would work? She says it would concentrate on a number of key high-audience programmes in public and independent sectors. We all appreciate her point about how useful and valuable it would be as a way of gathering data and of illustrating the affinity bias we see that Ms Coyle referred to where men look to other men to endorse their points. It would also illustrate Deputy Carroll MacNeill's last point that when there are relatively few women - fewer than one quarter of Deputies are women, as there are only 37 of us - there is an undue burden on the individual women in terms of having to always step up to represent women in the media. We must be conscious of that. It is the same in any sector. When women are under-represented on boards there is also an undue burden on the individual women in business. I remember colleagues in academia speaking bitterly about the requirement for gender balance on interview panels and what a huge burden that placed on senior women in an organisation when there were very few of them in any university. This is a real issue and we need to widen the pool, which is why the media training is so important to ensure that the burden does not always fall on women, as Deputy Carroll MacNeill has just noted. How would the year-long monitoring project for Women on Air work?

My next question is for the National Traveller Women's Forum. I want to ask Ms Joyce more about the nested-quota model she talks about. I presume she is not just speaking about that within a gender quota because, again, the bias falls on women to be more diverse as a group. It is clear there is a real issue with lack of representation for ethnic minority men also. How would that quota work in order that it would not just be nested within a gender quota but would apply across both genders, if one likes?

I take issue with the 30% Club's characterisation of quotas. I am a little concerned about that. The citizens' assembly was very clear in its recommendations under this heading, in particular recommendation 21 on boards. They are looking for gender quota legislation whereby funding would be contingent on reaching a quota, just as they are clear in recommendation 20 on the need for quotas in political representation. In 2009, I wrote a report on women's participation in politics for the justice committee that paved the way for the introduction of the quota legislation in politics in 2012. In our report we identified five Cs, that is, the obstacles that hold women back from participation on the airwaves and in public life generally. They are a lack of confidence, cash and childcare; an old boys' culture, which goes to the point made about cultural barriers, and then candidate selection procedures in political parties, which obstruct women's progress. Our recommendations were all targeted towards addressing the five Cs. What we found, on the basis of all the evidence we looked at and the witnesses who came before us, is that binding quotas would be required to enable women to rise above the existing structural barriers to women's participation.

The words "targets" and "quotas" are often used interchangeably but of course, the big difference is that a target is not binding or enforceable. The witnesses have characterised targets as setting out a floor and quotas a ceiling. In fact, our evidence was the other way around. The quota is the floor. That is the very minimum. Our quota is a gender-neutral quota in politics, obviously. It requires that political parties select no more than 30% - now rising to 40% - of their candidates of each gender. It is modelled on a Belgian law that was clearly effective in increasing the representation of women in the Belgian Parliament. It has already been effective in Ireland in increasing us from the abysmally low position of 16% up to the still far too low position of 23% in the Dáil.

I say all this because we really did interrogate this issue. The targets, by contrast, are a ceiling. They are an aspiration. Parties or companies are asked to aspire to reach a particular target. There is no penalty or sanction if they do not. Part of the success of gender quota laws everywhere, including Ireland, is that sanction. Parties lose 50% of their funding if they do not reach the quota. That is why all of us in political parties are really working hard to ensure there is a pipeline for the local elections in order that we can reach the 40% target of candidates in the general election, whenever it might be in 2024 or 2025. The pipeline really works with the quota. I really welcome the increase in numbers of women on boards, which the witnesses have illustrated. That is clearly very impressive and that has been done through the voluntary model but the evidence we had and the work we did in trying to move the numbers of women in politics up was that quotas were going to be the only way to achieve this, certainly if we have buy-in like the Scandinavian countries. Their big social democratic parties all adopted voluntary quotas and reached very impressive levels of women's representation. The political will here among the parties was not the same and, therefore, the statutory quota had to be addressed.

The point was made about why quotas are so important. As the witnesses said, even if we reach a sort of level of representation at board level, we still have the senior management level. Again, work I have done on women's representation in the legal profession revealed that higher levels of women's representation can be achieved among the Judiciary, but at the level of partners and solicitors' firms and senior counsel at the Bar, you will still have really low levels of representation of women. That is what we are seeing now.

I will make one final point. We need to be careful when we talk about tokenism. The argument that was always used against the introduction of the gender quota was that it would lead to token women. I have never seen or heard a token woman on the airwaves and have never seen or heard one who has been elected in politics. We have to nail that one. Visibility is crucial, as Ms O’Caoimh said. The visibility of role models to those 12-year-old girls and that notion that if a person cannot see it, he or she cannot be it, is so important. We need to have visibility of women. There is no such thing as a token woman.

My great friend Kathleen Lynch in Cork used to say that all her life, she voted for mediocre men and that just once, she would like the chance to vote for a mediocre woman. That is the reality. That is why we need quotas. I am sorry I have gone a bit but I feel passionately about this. The citizens' assembly clearly endorsed the quota model rather than voluntary targets. Some comments on that would be welcome. I will go first to Ms Duffy from Women on Air on that question about the year-long monitoring project.

Ms Roisin Duffy

First of all, this is anecdotal. I have no degree in statistics, but this is what we sense is actually needed here. When we talk about a year-long monitoring project, we are probably looking at radio because we are still very much a talk-radio nation. We still listen to radio. We get joint national listenership research, JNLR, figures every year for radio programmes, which give us some insight into what are the most influential programmes. I suspect many of them would be in news and current affairs across the island. That is one way of determining what those programmes ought to be.

Another way is to look at focus groups and see what comes out of that. Again, there are people with more knowledge than I have on how we go about that. However, the first thing is to identify what we are going to monitor and then draw up a way of monitoring it. There are many examples of how to do that. I will again mention 50:50 The Equality Project in the BBC, which has a monitoring spreadsheet, for want of a better word, at programme level, which could be looked at to put in place a proper statistical way of monitoring women on air and what is and is not news critical. You could then count a number of outcomes such as the total in terms of gender and the bit that is omitted. If, for instance, the Taoiseach happens to be a man and someone is doing a story on something in which the Taoiseach is the central speaker, there would be some other data that would tell us that, if you know what I mean. Again, I am not the person who can give the committee that kind of information but certainly, I think it would have to be radio.

We have done some preparatory work in looking at the mechanics of this, for instance, looking at artificial intelligence to help collect data for us. We are some way down the road in that regard but again, it is dealing with universities. We have not come to a clear conclusion. We are aware that the project is too big for us. We are a small voluntary board. We are doing a lot of stuff but we know that without that central piece, we will continue to paper over the cracks, as opposed to actually engendering change as a society. That is what I would say.

Even in the discussion today, Ms Joyce said Traveller women need to be in that process as a particular group. That is giving us more cause for thought and that is really important. There is a way to go on this but it requires the State to do it and to bring expertise from a number of areas to bear on that. We would be very happy to be involved, clearly, because we have very strong views on the whole thing. There are a number of expert groupings we need to bring together, however. We need to have the possibility and the funding to make it work. It is absolutely essential, however. Otherwise, we continue to whistle in the dark.

Chairman

Okay. That is very clear. I thank Ms Duffy. That is really helpful for us. Would Ms Joyce like to come in?

Ms Maria Joyce

We are focusing on nested quotas in the context of trying to ensure a positive outcome. That separation of gender equality from diversity has not delivered for Traveller women. Therefore, we feel there is a strong need to go that step further and look specifically at nested quotas in the context of gender. I will come back to the wider ethnic under-representation in a moment. Looking specifically at nested quotas means the political parties and the State have to look at a more comprehensive approach as to what kinds of specific and targeted measures need to be put in place to try to address this. We have created a kind of loose alliance with Women for Election and the National Women's Council of Ireland with regard to looking specifically at what nested quotas would look like in the context of gender quotas and advancing that work over the coming months into early 2023.

We might look at some European examples of where they looked at ethnic quotas in the context of ethnic minorities, which have not always delivered for women. I am not saying measures are not needed in the context of Irish political life to ensure greater representation of all under-represented groups. That includes Travellers as a whole, not just Traveller women. In saying that, however, serious work needs to be done in the context of Irish politics. When we look at a male-dominated profession such as politics, we must ask who are the males who are dominating that. The majority are more privileged and are predominantly white. There is very little ethnic visibility across any of that. Measures need to be put in place to start looking at that.

The Different Paths, Shared Experiences: Ethnic Minority Women and Local Politics in Ireland report contains research we did with Dr. Pauline Cullen that looked at ethnic quotas in the context of some other European countries. Those quotas did not deliver as such for Roma women; it was more for Roma men. I am not saying you could look at something like that in the context of Traveller men but I am saying that in terms of trying to ensure the prioritisation of Traveller women in the context of political life on some of those bases, when there is such a focus in the context of trying to create parity with regard to women and men, that point around which women we mean is really important.

There is some pushback against me in a couple of the political spaces in the context of getting women who are electable. That is unacceptable. If men were saying that about women in wider politics, elected women would be fairly quick to jump and ask who is electable. I do not want to confuse that with winnable seats. If one goes for the easiest route, however, one will never bring those furthest from reach into the centre.

Ms Melíosa O'Caoimh

Unfortunately, I need to leave because I am speaking at something in Trinity College in a few minutes. I have no doubt about the validity of the research that was done and the solution arrived at regarding quotas. That was clearly the right thing in the field you are talking about. I get that point. Maybe we are looking at something whereby one size does not fit all. I run a business in Ireland as part of a big global organisation. Something amazing is going on in the business world right now that I do not think quotas would serve very well. I can tell that by being in there.

Two main things matter. First, it makes business sense to have diversity in teams. Those teams are more innovative and come up with more ideas. They just look at everything differently. We all know we need diverse teams. One can no longer send five of the same people along to a sales pitch. One will not win the business. It makes business sense to have diverse teams. Second, our stakeholders are demanding diversity. Whether it is our employees, shareholders, clients or customers, they are demanding that they see a company that is thinking in a deeper and more meaningful way about diversity.

I agree with you that there is no such thing as tokenism. However, we are getting to the women earlier. It is a bit like the school story except that, unfortunately, it is later. We are training them up. People are advocating for, sponsoring and bringing women up through. Those women are getting there by earning it in their own right and on merit. We need to think about the wonderful thing happening there. Maybe it is not a one size fits all. I know Ms Harford will do a much better job of giving a good answer-----

Chairman

That is a very good answer

Ms Melíosa O'Caoimh

-----about a broader base. Unfortunately, I need to leave now. I thank you for the opportunity

Chairman

That is fine. We will not keep you much longer. I apologise to colleagues because we have gone well over time.

Ms Gillian Harford

You raised a very interesting question to which there are many different facets. I will start at the end rather than the beginning, to echo Ms O'Caoimh's point. Typically, we see the debate, especially when we talk about targets and quotas, as not the difference between what they are but the difference between merit and targets and quotas. We absolutely support the view that there is no expectation that targets and quotas do not count merit. Whether a woman is appointed through a target, a quota or a totally non-designated process, it is on the basis of merit, especially from an organisation point of view.

I will not claim to comment here as an expert on the electoral process but as a citizen and a voter. The two scenarios are slightly different. One scenario involves multiple parties - excuse the pun - with one outcome. When we look at targets and quotas for business, one entity is looking at making decisions on many outcomes. Having only one entity puts far more pressure on it with regard to employee, investor and competitive expectations in the procurement world. The business has an incentive.

What our experience in the business space shows us is that quotas become the ceiling. Once an organisation has met the quota, it is managed within the compliance world and the box is ticked. What we see is that when organisations are encouraged to think about the business benefits - actively encouraged by the wider business community - by initiatives such as balance for better business, it becomes a starting point because as soon as they get to 30, the next question is when they will be at 40 or 50.

Until we have evidence that shows to the contrary that countries that have gone very far down the quota route that it improves aspects for women especially in executive roles, we still see that targets as where one goes until they fail. We still do not have evidence of countries that have gone beyond listed organisations which is a challenge. If Ireland were to go down this route, we would be trailblazing in an area where there is already evidence that in listed organisations, this has not been overly successful.

We are in 18 chapters around the world. I speak to colleagues in many different countries. We see Australia, Canada, the UK and Ireland sharing where industry is stepping up to change the landscape. We talk to colleagues in France, Germany, Poland and Italy and we still see diversity as part of the compliance conversation rather than the business conversation and we think that is what would make the difference. If business has to step up, not because it is the good or right thing to do, but because it makes absolute business sense, that stops it being a ceiling and turns it into a floor from which business stretches.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I am in danger of mansplaining the conversation that just happened-----

Chairman

As the token man here.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

Exactly.

Chairman

Without using the word, "token".

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I will go back to a conversation that was once had about putting a ticket together for electoral politics and reaching the target. If people are struggling to reach the target and only have the option to put who they might deem as unelectable women on the ticket, they are doing something wrong and the quota is actually just the light shining in on a problem, rather than the solution of the problem. The issue of the quota is very much like what Ms Duffy mentioned earlier about the data collection in that the quota is a form of data collection. If political parties have unelectable women, they are doing something wrong in all of the other areas, rather than not achieving the quota. We need to look at quota plus. Rather than looking at one level of success, we need to look at all of the other things.

Someone said that politics is all waffle and that then one day it is just maths, namely, the day of the results. It is just maths in that one needs X number of votes to get elected. Business is exactly the same in that there is considerable talk and strategy buzzwords but on one day at the end of the year when the year-end accounts are done, it is maths. A crude mathematical solution in politics works and a mathematical solution might also drive the conversation in business.

I will ask all three witnesses about the tech sector and social media. In many ways, when it comes to pillars of democracy and decency, the social media world is the wild west. Stuff is happening there that would just not be tolerated on a broadcaster or in any other sort of publication. It comes down to platforms' views that they are not publishers. I very much believe that they are publishers. Many of these companies are accused of being very holistic in that all their services are on the campus, which just turns into a drive to the employee being on the campus all the time and having no balance. I represent Finglas and Ballymun and we often find that our communities are demonised by one story that does not represent our wider communities. I have no doubt the Traveller community feels that even more than communities such as mine do. Will Ms Joyce comment on some of the sensational programming by some TV stations on Traveller culture and especially on social media incidents of violence and so on and how that impacts on the perception of Traveller culture?

With regard to the Future of Media Commission, traditional media is constantly battling with this wild west.

Is there anything specifically in the gender space that the representatives believe we need to deploy? There is no point in us having balance on traditional media, such as radio and so on, which we talked about, when large percentages of the population never consume traditional media but are consuming it all online. Those are three questions.

Chairman

I have teenage daughters. I know that radio has gone for so many. In the order Deputy McAuliffe asked those questions, I will go to Ms Harford first, followed by Ms Joyce and Ms Duffy.

Ms Gillian Harford

I will put on record that I agree with the Deputy on maths. We struggle in Ireland in respect of data on private companies. Even that, as a first step, would be fantastic in terms of action.

On where modern organisations are at, we see employees struggling with the concept of work-life balance. In the modern world, the idea of clocking in, clocking out and then work stopping no longer applies. We see organisations starting to talk about work-life blend. If an organisation really wants to keep talent, particularly in the faster-growing sectors, we actively encourage it to be open to the idea that its employees have a life. If organisations want to encourage men and women equally into their workforces, especially into higher-value roles, they have to allow for a level of agility. We saw that probably the best thing to come out of Covid, if there ever was a best thing, was that overnight, organisations which had said they could never allow their employees to work in a more agile or remote way had no choice but to do so. That argument has already been made but that was just an argument about technology.

When we work with all our industry groups now, we say to them that agility is about giving employees more control over their day, their location and what needs to be done, whether they are in manufacturing or in an office role. While the requirements are different, if organisations do not understand that their employees have a life that is built as integral to work, then they will lose the talent and lose to their competitors. That is-----

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I am conscious of time.

Ms Gillian Harford

That is a driving force.

Ms Maria Joyce

The nature of the Deputy's questions reflects some of the wider context in which questions will be asked. There are numerous examples of sensationalist media. "Big Fat Gypsy Weddings" was just stereotypical and sexist - the entire gauntlet of words - as regards Traveller women. I do not know if I am in danger when mentioning names or whatever, but we have also seen this when a presidential candidate came out on the anti-Traveller ticket, and what he exposed and the approach he took when he was lagging behind. He was last at that point in the race and then came out to make those comments. The coverage that got right across the media, whether it was against or for the comments, was like a feeding frenzy in the way it all got managed. It is not just about the sensationalist tag lines. It is the way in which the media come in around some of that which further impacts on it. That has a very detrimental impact on the community as a whole, as does any kind of media coverage that stereotypes the sexism within that community, or demonises or portrays a whole community as criminals because it sells papers or increases viewership. Those kind of things have to be held to account in the context of media in Ireland.

I will make one further point. I am very conscious that we have talked about quotas. In our submission, we named some wider issues that need to be addressed because they should be part of a package. It cannot be just the quotas themselves, as important as we see them to increasing the number of women in politics and ensuring a space for Traveller women in electoral politics, for example, reserved seats for Travellers. We need something that will instigate instant change to build on what needs to be done, alongside all the issues that were talked about today. I am also conscious of the issues that were talked about in more detail by this committee at its meeting on 13 October, including sustainability and all of that in the context of politics.

Looking to other examples in Europe, such as the Malta version discussed at the committee meeting on 13 October, when all that maths was added up and the seats were filled around the table, the right to have 12 seats for under-represented groups was reserved. That would bring instant change. Let us be honest about that. It would require legislation but there is no harm in doing that. We go down legislative routes when we need to. We need to look at this and prioritise it as part of the legislative process. If that happens, I hope that those seats for under-represented groups will be reflective of all Irish society, including Travellers.

Ms Roisin Duffy

I will be brief.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

Please do not be.

Ms Roisin Duffy

As far as we are concerned, the same rules apply. Gender monitoring needs to happen when it comes to digital offerings, especially on digital platforms. That is not just about who has come or who is quoted but also the pictures that are used. Everything, including the complexion of the page, almost like the page of a newspaper, needs to have some level of gender balance. Quite often, it is just a lack of being conscious of the fact that a platform has three generic pictures of men in uniforms or whatever. It just means platforms have to be more creative. My experience of this is that as soon as it is mentioned, people see it and they work to change it.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

The question was about the social media element.

Ms Roisin Duffy

On technology and social media, which the Deputy called "the wild west", it is absolutely significant that they be made accountable, are penalised and are called out on these matters. That is essential. It is one of the recommendations I see that needs to be followed through on, especially considering many of these organisations are headquartered here.

Chairman

Recommendation 24 really addresses that.

Ms Roisin Duffy

That is right. I think so.

Ms Maria Joyce

I will add to that point. I forgot to mention social media, even though I made a note of it. Social media, in the negative sphere, has vilified Travellers in this country. This is the other side of accountability and it is so important that it is addressed. It is also about political accountability to stand over the fact that we have these companies in the Irish context. Although they bring in a lot of money to this country, that does not take away from the fact that stronger protections and measures need to be brought in, even if that is in the context of the EU, which is something we have not discussed today and that has made various contributions in respect of social media. Let us make no mistake that social media has vilified Travellers.

There were a couple of Traveller women in Killarney - maybe I should not have mentioned Killarney - who took a case under legislation that I cannot recall but that we hope will be replaced by incitement-to-hatred legislation.

Chairman

It is the hate-crime legislation.

Ms Maria Joyce

Yes. The hate-crime legislation is hopelessly inadequate. The Traveller women in Killarney took a very good case against a social media platform but it was thrown out by the judge who did not make the nicest comments himself. Social media needs to be encompassed by all those processes, including the legal and incitement-to-hatred processes. Otherwise, things will not change.

Chairman

We are all agreed on that. I will give Deputy Cronin the last word. We will go back to all our witnesses, but this is the last exchange.

Deputy Réada Cronin

I knew I would get two rounds. I talked to a woman recently who is very high up in the corporate world. I was talking to her regarding her child not getting a seat on the school bus service. She raised the issue that the lack of support from the State affects her being able to hold onto her job, and the gap that exists between announcing new policy and the delivery of it. I ask Ms Harford to give some information on how these companies give women practical support.

It is still a fact that the imbalance of care falls on women. That is not always men's fault. Sometimes it is our kids' fault as well because kids want mammy when they are sick.

I disagree on the floor and ceiling. Encouragement is all very intangible and abstract and quotas cannot be achieved without will. We had no gender quotas in the North but Sinn Féin was able to get 50% female representation in the Assembly without a quota because the will was there. Without getting women up at the decision-making tables, I worry about how we are going to change the will and the culture of corporations. Ms Harford mentioned when quotas were introduced in Norway. I ask her to give me a bit more detail on that because I do not understand how that happened. I am not afraid to say when I do not understand something.

I have another question for Women on Air. There is a recent study to which Senator Boylan has made reference. It showed that 65% of female journalists have experienced violent threats, sexual threats and intimidation but 31% of them experienced that in their workplace. What kind of support is there in that regard for women working in journalism?

My last questions are for Ms Joyce. I referred to the gaps in the supports the Government can provide. What are the specific and immediate needs of Travellers and other minorities in order that we can get that joined-up policy delivery and all that? Ms Joyce mentioned a few cases. I am not going to mention any cases but normalising prison sentences in any family is appalling. It should not be happening. That is something we should be looking at. As well as the inconvenience of mammy not being there because she is in prison for not paying a fine, prison becomes normalised for their kids. It is just appalling. We absolutely need education for judges on that.

Chairman

We will avoid speaking about any specific case, if that is okay.

Ms Gillian Harford

Hopefully this will be helpful on the question about Norway. Norway moved very early on the idea of quotas for companies listed on its stock exchange. If they did not meet the quotas, they were delisted, which had implications for the company. The hope was that it would increase the number of women on boards but also increase the number of women in executive positions. The outcome was that it increased the number of women on individual boards but it reduced the number of board positions overall because so many companies delisted, as they knew they were not going to be able to meet the quota. Women were also plucked out of executive positions and moved onto board positions, and maybe took three or four positions to try to help companies fill the quota. Instead of actually improving the pipeline, it disimproved it. Norway is now looking at ways it can increase the number of women in executive posts and it is struggling because companies focused on quotas rather than thinking about how they would build the pipeline themselves. That is the situation that has occurred. We have seen the same replicated in some other European countries as well. It has not done what was expected in respect of the general uplift and that is why we talk about it as a ceiling, rather than a floor, but it is all architecture at the end of the day.

I identify with the Deputy's other question, having reared two children myself while holding down a career. It is something organisations and women in organisations still struggle with. We are seeing a greater appetite among men to have a greater share in parental responsibilities. Organisations are stepping up in their policies around family leave, recognising that employees have different needs at different stages in their lives. We see an opportunity there and perhaps this committee could consider how we look at this in a more integrated way. We should look at where policy can help organisations but also where organisations can help policy. It is not just a case of looking at childcare over here, paternity leave over here and maternity leave over here. It is about looking at life in the round and working out where policymakers and business can work together. Organisations are stepping in, being creative and trying to think in a more modern way, even if that means they are a step ahead of the legislation. We need to see more of that.

Instead of thinking about the role of a father, mother or parent, we should be thinking about what our children need. We need to think about birth leave as opposed to maternity leave, the needs of immediately-born children and the needs of young children. All of that cuts across policy and what organisations need to do. It is about making sure that is more inclusive for any parent, any partner, and for lone parents and then making it more attractive. The biggest challenge organisations have is that they might have incredible policies but they struggle to encourage men and women to avail of them equally. In our research, we still see men saying that if they avail of a form of family leave it could impact on their career. We need to change that through senior leaders acting as role models and companies encouraging men and women equally to avail of family support systems.

Ms Roisin Duffy

I would like to see the survey mentioned. I am very interested in it. Those figures, at 65%, are very high. I am assuming that is for Ireland; or is it across Europe?

Deputy Réada Cronin

It is across the EU. It was a study by the International News Safety Institute. I could have it sent to Ms Duffy.

Ms Roisin Duffy

I certainly would like to have a look at that. The Deputy also said that 31% of female journalists are experiencing harassment-----

Deputy Réada Cronin

Intimidation or abuse in their own workplace.

Ms Roisin Duffy

That is pretty significant as well. I would very much like to look at the statistics and see precisely what the report says. Clearly that is something we would take on board. There is no doubt about that.

Chairman

We do not have a copy of that report so we have not addressed it yet.

Ms Roisin Duffy

It would be very good to have it. I am not going to give an answer beyond that as I would like to read the report.

Deputy Réada Cronin

Could Ms Duffy comment on whether media outlets are providing an inclusive and supportive working environment for female journalists?

Ms Roisin Duffy

I do not want to discuss my own organisation because that is obviously not why I am here. I am here to talk about Women on Air. We have had events where women journalists were in the audience and on occasion they have mentioned that they felt harassed, intimidated or not seen as equal. We have had those discussions but that is anecdotal. Beyond that, I cannot really comment.

Chairman

We are back to the case for data-----

Ms Roisin Duffy

As I keep saying.

Chairman

-----and really good data gathering.

Ms Roisin Duffy

I do not in any way dispute the figures. I have no reason to do that.

Chairman

Clearly we need more information. Ms Joyce will have the last word.

Ms Maria Joyce

I will be brief. The Deputy asked about specific things that can be done now and what supports are needed overall. Politics and women in politics are not in isolation from the wider social determinants. Implementation of positive Traveller policy development is essential. We have policy context in health that looks at the stark inequalities in health outcomes. To take two top headlines, Traveller women live over 11 years less than the settled majority and we have higher rates of infant mortality. According to the 2016 census, 30% of Traveller women are still responsible for care in the home.

Deputy Réada Cronin

I was talking about this yesterday evening with regard to literacy in healthcare providers, who are generally women, and being able to read a medicine bottle.

Ms Maria Joyce

Many of those issues have been highlighted by local primary healthcare programmes right across the country. It is also about where the gaps and deficits are.

On that point about education and literacy issues, part of the programme for Government currently has a Traveller education strategy. We need to see that developed and rolled out. We need to address the greater impact of mental health issues and higher levels of suicide rates among Travellers. For women alone, it is six times higher than the national average. We need to see a mental health strategy, which, again, is a programme for Government commitment for Travellers, that we have not seen yet.

We need to see the stark unemployment issues addressed. More than 80% of Traveller women are unemployed, but also more than 80% of men. We, therefore, need to see implementation and further development of that kind of policy context to identify where the gaps are. We also need to see the resources being put back into community development in this country.

There were massive cuts right across the board in the community and voluntary sector following on from the recession. They have not been restored. This is in the context of national Traveller organisations but I am talking in particular about the context of restoring those to pre-recession levels at local level. That is important.

It is important that where we have pieces of research, they do not sit on the shelves. I am talking about the Traveller policy. Much work went into developing research entitled, Different Paths, Shared Experiences: Ethnic Minority Women and Local Politics in Ireland. That report makes good recommendations for the State, the Oireachtas and the political parties. That will be another piece of research that sits on the shelf. It is not being resourced to implement changes.

Deputy Réada Cronin

I was in local politics before I came to the Oireachtas. I sat on the local Traveller accommodation consultative committee, LTACC, in Kildare County Council. The witnesses are talking about Traveller women even being present in the room. Is there any way that local government could help support women? I just do not mean getting elected but by having them on different committees. Traveller women are only on the LTACC. It was hard; they had no support. There were no travel expenses or anything for them to go to those meetings. Could Ms Joyce comment on that as well?

Ms Maria Joyce

Of course. They need to step up to the plate in the context of the wider role of local authorities, and the engagement of Travellers and Traveller women across that and the additional supports that are needed. When we look at engagement in politics, a person's economic situation also has a key role as to whether there will be success. That is a significant barrier for any woman coming from a lower socioeconomic background. With a more than 80% rate of unemployment in this country and significant issues of poverty, that is going to have a significant impact on Traveller women. Traveller women are engaging and have engaged, however.

The Senator mentioned the LTACCs. They have continued to engage in those spaces for more than 20 years. As a woman who sat in one of those spaces, I can tell the Senator that they are not easy spaces in which to sit in terms of sexist and anti-Traveller remarks. Elected officials sit at that table in a consultative space to advance Traveller accommodation and then when they are out in the media sphere, they make really anti-Traveller comments on accommodation and housing. That is not helpful.

There is, therefore, a huge amount local authorities need to do around breaking down some of those barriers in direct supports and engagement, but certainly also in looking at the policies and spaces in which Travellers are engaging. They must make sure they are anti-racist and anti-sexist spaces, and that significant training is provided to all staff on cultural competency, Traveller cultural awareness and equality and human rights in terms of how they engage with Travellers. This should be done at an individual level, but also in the context of how they are engaging in those committee spaces and political spaces.

Chairman

I thank Ms Joyce very much. That is a very strong point on which to finish. It is good to finish on the local politics level as well. I will draw our meeting to a close. I thank my colleagues for all the great engagement. Our guests can see how committed we are to ensuring that the recommendations of the citizens' assembly are implemented as our work draws to a close.

On behalf of the committee, I thank our guests from the 30% Club, Ms Gillian Harford and Ms Meliosa O’Caoimh; from Women on Air, Ms Roisin Duffy and Ms Pat Coyle; and Ms Maria Joyce from the National Traveller Women's Forum. I will be thinking of Ms Coyle's words about the voices of women next time I am on the radio and I will not lower my voice. I think we all will. I thank them all very much for giving us the benefit of their experience, expertise and sometimes diverse but important views and perspectives on the recommendations. We appreciate their engagement. It will be useful to us when we come to finalise our report, which we are due to submit on 1 December, over the coming month and a half. Our work is nearly concluded. I remind colleagues that our next and final public meeting will be next Thursday.

The joint committee adjourned at 11.35 a.m. until 9.15 a.m. on Thursday, 27 October 2022.