Powerful Positions- No Women Need Apply

First published 4th April 2005 in Village magazine.
This was the week that the new Pontiff, Benedict XVI was elected and senior members of the DUP were invited to meet over dinner with Dublin’s Chamber of Commerce and other key business figures.      



       POWERFUL POSITION- NO WOMEN NEED APPLY

Have you ever noticed how, if you raise the issue of gender representation in decision-making within organisations, the first reply you get is- “ but we have a woman on the committee/board/management etc.”  I force myself to think of that response as recognition that one, solitary, lone, token woman is the equivalent of the dozen men who have permanent residence on the committee/board/management. In allowing myself that little fantasy, I am working to suppress the overwhelming desire to deck the eejit who just said something that dumb.

My powers of self-restraint are really put to the test when the response goes along the lines of, “ but our meetings are open to women and they are just not interested.” Oh boy! That would be the meetings that are held just when children are being fed their main meal of the day, read to and put to bed, or the ones held in the morning when kids have to be got washed, dressed, fed and deposited at school.  Or, maybe that would be the meetings that no one knows about especially not women because no one bothered to tell any women. Perhaps it’s the meetings where the ‘resident men’ enter into rhetorical pissing competitions with one another to see who is the dominant male, smartest lad in the class, or mummy’s clever little boy. These kind of meetings are lots of fun for men but as interesting as watching cheese mould for women (and not much better for those men who have more sense than the majority of their peers.).

Then there is the position much beloved of quite a few NGOs and semi-state bodies,  “But- we- are- an- inclusive –organisation.” This is a revolutionary new approach to inclusion.  It involves chanting  “ we are an inclusive organisation” mantra-like over and over, until eventually the chant transcends reality. I am particularly intrigued by that response because it demonstrates the intense level of self-delusion that can be attained without the use of psychotropic drugs. The levels of self-delusion will be roughly proportionate to the gaps in representation of women, people with disabilities and ethnic minorities in the organisation. It is also important to note that a token disabled person working the phones or doing the photo-copying, several women in the typing pool and a Ukrainian cleaner does nothing to diminish my point.

But I bring you glad tidings on the gender balance front or rather, Minister Frank Fahey with responsibility for Equality does. He announced recently that he had requested, “ all Ministers put in place the necessary procedures to implement the Government decision on equal representation on State Boards.” According to the Minister, all nominating bodies must put forward both male and female options for appointments to State Boards.  Fahey’s instructions are an attempt to finally get somewhere close to the 40% female representation which he identifies as having been promised in both the Programme for Government and Sustaining Progress 2003-2006.  Minister Fahey’s actions are most definitely welcome.

However, women have been waiting just a little longer for government to take that kind of action than the Minister’s statement suggests. The 40% gender representation target has been around since 1991. The National Women’s Council of Ireland first proposed it as a target in their submission to the 2nd Commission on the Status of Women in 1990 who successfully recommended it be adopted as a policy guideline by government. So, it has only taken fourteen years to produce a specific action to bring about its implementation. And of course Minister Fahey’s timing has not been influenced by Ireland’s imminent attendance in July at the UN, Charter for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee where, our government will have to show what progress, if any, has been made on addressing women’s inequality in Ireland on a number of fronts.

Nevertheless, in a week that saw a global leader appointed in a ritual by 144 patriarchs invoking the elitism and sexism of a darker age, and a business dinner for unionist brethren hosted by the fathers of Irish finance and industry in a gentlemen’s Dublin club, then Frank Fahey’s small and tardy gesture is all the more essential.