Few women at senior council level - study

A NEW report has found that women are seriously under-represented at senior management positions in Dublin City Council as well as at a political level.

While women fill more than half of the council's administrative positions, men make up the majority of senior positions and only eight out of 27 executive managers are women, the report, which was launched for International Women's Day, found.

Despite considerable progress, women have not reached a critical mass in decisionmaking roles, the report heard in interviews with women at the council. It "speaks volumes that there isn't a representative number of women in the top layer of management" in the council, the respondents said.

Men make up 70 per cent of about 400 professional posts such as engineers and architects. There is a "dearth of women working in non-traditional roles within the council", the report finds. Women make up only 3 per cent of the 1,000 fire brigade personnel and 12 per cent of the city's almost 3,000 general operatives.

Assigning jobs on the basis of gender is found to be a major barrier. Women said they were not assigned outdoor work and one claimed "most depots wouldn't even have women's toilets". Women said this specialisation was not good for their careers.

Women are also shown to be under-represented in the political sphere. Just 29 per cent of councillors in Dublin City Council are women, yet this is higher than the national average of 20 per cent. Representation where decisions are made and policy is formulated "is a central tenant of democracy", according to the report.

It had been hoped that the new structures introduced in the Local Government Act, 2001, would increase the number of women involved in decisionmaking. However, there is still gender inequality across county development boards and only 21 per cent of the Dublin City Development Board is female, the study finds. The council's corporate policy group is entirely made up of men. A lack of affordable childcare is identified as "one of the biggest issues of all" when it comes to women moving from community development to political involvement.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times