Dr. Melanie Hoewer:

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to speak and I thank Deputy Wall for sharing with us his experiences and for the important comments he made on women's leadership. Women's leadership in politics is indeed one of the crucial challenges we face not just in the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, but more generally. Academic research has shown over decades that the national sphere of politics is mainly informed by male hopes, male aspirations and male experiences. This does not mean that men, such as those who are represented here today, are worse than women but it means they are different. They have different experiences, hopes and aspirations and they do not cover the hopes, aspirations and experiences of more than 50% of the population in many countries. Consequently, I greatly welcome those comments. The Deputy posed an important question as to what is happening, why women are not participating, why access points are not opening or why spaces are not being given for women's participation.

I share the Deputy's experience. I teach in a third level university in an academic college from which the majority of graduates are women at present. Consequently, the question is, where do they end up and why do they not go into politics? There is a fear that politics, as we see in national parliaments in Ireland, in Northern Ireland, are still very male-dominated. While changes are happening, there is still male dominance. This is one factor, namely, men speaking to one another. I do not wish to generalise by saying all men are the same and all women are the same; there are different experiences among both men and women. However, because we generally look at how we perceive normality, the perceived normality is that men are just in parliament and women predominantly are in the home. While changes are happening, how can one speed up these changes to happen more quickly? I believe the quota is very important. I do not advocate for long-term quotas but for a quota that ensures that access points are given. Access points, which Deputy Wall clearly has already identified, are not there yet. We have amazing women in politics and I am sure Liz McManus can also share some of her experiences from that angle as to how they got in. More structural, institutional access points, as I would like to call them, such as quotas are needed. In addition, we need champions. We need male and female gender champions who help and support women - in particular young women - to build up their leadership roles.

I wish to make a point on Northern Ireland before I hand over to Ms Orlaith Fitzmaurice. It is interesting that during the conflict in Northern Ireland, there were many women in leadership functions in certain communities. We have much evidence that women can lead, can lead communities and can be very effective in politics. Despite the fact that the equality argument should not require that women must prove themselves to be equal to men to have access to local parliaments, during the conflict, there was a lot of female leadership within Northern Ireland. Since 1998, however, this female leadership has reduced in the communities. While I do not wish to repeat what Liz McManus and Helena Keleher have just outlined, I refer to the increasing fear, increasing control, increasing domestic violence and decreasing female community leadership in communities in Northern Ireland. Talking about fear, control, violence, etc., shows something has gone wrong in the time after 1998, with the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Women have played an instrumental role, albeit very minimal as regards numbers, in getting the Good Friday Agreement negotiated. I refer here to the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. However, where they have made incredible changes, which is so important for the peace process in Northern Ireland, on human rights and equality institutions, what is happening on human rights and equality in Northern Ireland at present is a crucial question. This is yet another access point to get women into politics because it is a human rights and equality issue. I thank members for their attention.