There is an absolute need for positive discrimination towards women by political parties at all levels and particularly at candidate selection level.

This was proposed by Independent MEP Marian Harkin when she spoke in a debate in the European Parliament on a Report on Equality Between Men and Women in the EU.

She suggested that women should constitute 50% of all candidates and rejected the often expressed views that this would prevent the best people being selected.  “This a rubbish argument and with women constituting 51% of Ireland’s population you will get candidates as good as you would from the other 49%”, she said.  She felt very strongly that issues such as violence in the home, trafficking of women, the higher incidence of poverty among women and other matters were seen to be women’s issues when in fact they were social issues.  “Until we have sufficient numbers of women at decision making level these issues will not be mainstreamed in policy responses and will not be properly addressed”, Marian Harkin said.

The Independent MEP pointed out that the gender pay gap at 16% remained unacceptably high across Europe.  This had major implications for women’s standard of living, for their families and their quality of life.  She supported the call in the report to all member states to ensure that women had equal access to social insurance schemes.  She pointed out that in Ireland spouses of self employed business people or farmers were often not covered by social insurance in their own right even though they worked in the business or farm.  Women in this situation lost out on many benefits and entitlements and it represented discrimination which had to be changed, Marian Harkin MEP said.