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Equality and Human Rights of Women and Girls in Ireland

 
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The Constitution of Ireland provides that "all citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law.  This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function" (Article 40.1).

The first (1970-1973) and second (1990-1996) Commissions on the Status of Women considered steps necessary to ensure the participation of women on equal terms and conditions with men in the political, social, cultural and economic life of the country.  Women's empowerment and related issues have been considered by the Convention on the Constitution (2012-2016), the Citizens Assembly (2016-2018) and are the focus of the Citizens Assembly on Gender Equality (established 2019). 

Ireland's membership since 1973 of the European Economic Community (EEC), now the European Union, was followed by introduction of equal pay legislation in 1977, and in the late 1990s by broader equality legislation on nine discriminatory grounds including gender (the Employment Equality Acts and the Equal Status Acts) along with the establishment of equality bodies and the Irish Human Rights Commission.

In 1985, Ireland acceded to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Priorities set out in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 have also informed a series of national action plans in Ireland for the advancement of women, most recently the National Strategy for Women and Girls 2017-2020.

Ireland's equality, gender equality and human rights infrastructure was revised again in recent years with the establishment of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Workplace Relations Commission, while coordination of policy and implementation is now a function of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Grant assistance is provided annually by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (previously the Department of Justice and Equality) to National Womens Organisations, which supports a grant for core expenditure of the National Women’s Council of Ireland.  Funding is also provided for positive action for gender equality, which currently supports specified women’s organisations, projects to support women’s return to employment and female entrepreneurship, and initiatives to promote equality for women and girls under the National Strategy for Women and Girls.

Scheme to Support National Organisations

The Scheme to Support National Organisations is a key element of the Department of Rural and Community Development support for the role of the community and voluntary sector in contributing to the development of strong and vibrant civil society and in improving outcomes for those most disadvantaged.  The programme provides multi-annual funding towards the core costs of national community and voluntary organisations in Ireland that focus on providing supports focusing on social exclusion, addressing poverty or promoting equality.  Among the successful recipients of the current scheme, running from 1st July 2019 to mid-2022, are three organisations whose remit can be immediately identified alongside the specified headings of Goal 5.

These are:
Women’s Aid (End Discrimination and Violence);
The National Women’s Council of Ireland (Equality and Empowerment); and
SAFE Ireland

There are also recipient organisations working with children and vulnerable persons, whose remit may not be exclusively for women and/or girls alone, but who play a role, whether directly or indirectly, in supporting the aims of Goal 5.  Examples are:
Barnardos;
Children’s Rights Alliance;
The Rape Crisis Network Ireland;
Free Legal Advice Centres

Equality Data Audit 2020

On the 13th of October, 2020 the CSO published the Equality Data Audit 2020.  The Equality Data Audit is a new initiative to bring awareness of the available data related to equality and also to highlight gaps in the data.  The European Commission’s Subgroup on Equality Data published their ‘Guidelines on the Collection of Equality Data’ in 2019.  The guidelines provide a series of steps and actions to improve the collection and use of equality data.  One of these steps includes a data audit, along with a range of institutional, structural and operational activities.  This work by the CSO on an Equality Data Audit was prompted by these guidelines and also by the requirement of the Equality Budgeting Group in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to know about the availability of equality data.  The Equality Data Audit involved reaching out to public sector bodies and requesting them to fill out an audit template.  The returned audits were then collated and reviewed.  Some analysis was then completed, highlighting areas where there is a lack of data collected, such as race and sexual orientation, and also areas where there is a large variety of data available (e.g. age categories).  The full results can be found in the report.  The Equality Data Audit is planned to be a document that will be periodically updated.  The report describes the results and recommendations of the audit with a link to the actual audit in the report (Equality Data Audit July 2020 Audit File (XLS 416KB).

Women and Men in Ireland 2019

In April 2020, the CSO released the eleventh publication of Women and Men in Ireland 2019

The progress indicators used in this report were chosen because they help to:

  • Identify important gender differences in the activities of men and women;
  • Assist users to identify the underlying reasons that explain these differences;
  • Present the situation in Ireland in an international context.

The chapter in the report titled 'Gender Equality' shows further information on gender balance and representation.

Go to next chapter: End Discrimination and Violence