Why So Few Women in Dáil Éireann? The Effects of the Single Transferable Vote Election System
Rent from DeepDyveThe results from the 2002 general election in Ireland provide a helpful starting point for an analysis of the potential causes of the low level of female representation in Dáil Éireann. Many observers have focused on political culture as the critical variable that explains women's historic low level of representation. But Ireland's electoral system, which allows for the single-transferable vote (STV), also has numerous effects on the outcomes of elections. Recent research in other national settings, especially Australia, leads one to expect that STV would result in a relatively high number of women elected to Ireland's lower house; but the number of women TDs elected since the founding of the Free State is surprisingly small. This finding does not necessarily contradict the results of research in other states that use a similar electoral system. Instead, it indicates that something beyond the mechanics of the electoral system accounts for the relatively low number of women elected to the Dáil.
In examining the selection of new candidates, the perception that there has been no inherent need or advantage for a party to nominate more women candidates appears to be a crucial factor in accounting for the low number of women who have been elected. The recent decision by Fianna Fáil at their 2005 Ard Fheis, or annual party convention, to nominate women to at least a third of their candidacies by 2014 is a significant move to increase female representation in the long term, and it may well begin a process that will undermine historic low levels of women's representation in Ireland. This decision represents a recognition that the Irish political system has been slow to change to incorporate more women into legislative positions. Fianna Fáil's commitment no doubt also reflects a response to the increased success of women candidates in other parties.
The ability to integrate women into the Irish political process has been a continuing source of concern since even before women gained the franchise.1 The role of women in forging Ireland's early democratic institutions and gaining [End Page 71] the franchise has been the subject of several recent and forthcoming works.2 If modern democracies were built on the fundamental principle of equality, then women should not only vote on who the leaders of a state should be, but also should be able to seek and attain office as well. Worldwide, research over the past two decades has consistently shown that women have yet to achieve equality in terms of representation in most democracies.3 In the Irish case, few women were elected to sit in the Dáil throughout its history. During the period 1977 to 1992 the number of women elected to the Dáil increased nearly three-fold, from 4.1 percent to 12 percent, but the number of women TDs has not risen significantly since the early 1990s. Given Ireland's dramatic socioeconomic and cultural changes over the past decade, it is surprising that earlier gains in terms of female representation were not extended in the most recent time period. In 1997, women again won 12 percent of the seats in the Dáil, and in 2002 voters selected 13.2 percent of their representatives to be women.4
Much of the scholarly literature stresses that the principal obstacles to women entering elected office have been cultural or ideological biases against women playing this role in society.5 While this cultural variable clearly plays a major role in explaining women's representation—and in the Irish case, this might help explain the historic low numbers of women elected to the Dáil—it does not help explain the failure of earlier gains to be extended in the last fifteen years. Rather, one would have expected a rapid expansion...
