'Driving Equality for Women in Co.Louth' report launched

Louth County Council welcomed the launch of a new report Driving Equality for Women in Co Louth (2023) at an event in Monasterboice recently.

The report is the result of collaborative engagement between Louth County Council, Louth Public Participation Network and Louth Local Development with over 200 women across the county, and captures the themes, objectives, outcomes and outputs of the participative process. 

Organisers said that starting in March 2020 Louth Local Development engaged over 100 women to collectively explore the impact of inequality on women’s lives in County Louth. Subsequent programmes during Covid-19 involved on-line engagement programmes with women to explore coming together and having a stronger voice. 

The engagement of ‘Think Visual’ in 2022 explored the issues that were experienced in the county with 40 women from various backgrounds engaging in the process. Parallel to this Louth County Council and the Public Participation Network ran a seminar in 2022 highlighting the need for more women in leadership and political roles. Following on from this a collaboration was formed between the Louth County Council, Louth Public Participation Network and Louth Local Development to delve down into the issues that were recognised as being barriers to women’s progression. 

Organisers say engagement with eight core groups of women from all backgrounds in County Louth were integral in shaping recommendations to drive equality for women across key themes and beyond. 

It is hoped that the report will help promote a strong community voice amongst women across Louth to help build partnerships moving forward and to advocate for lasting change.  

Many of the women involved in the engagement process were present on the day to help launch the final report, which was facilitated by Geraldine Johnston from Boyne Communications. 

Cllr. Paula Butterly, Cathaoirleach Louth County Council officiated at the event, thanking the participants for their vital contributions during the engagement process. 

The Cathaoirleach said that while Louth has “a comparatively favourable female representation at local level, more still needs to be done to achieve gender balance in our local political system.” 

Louth County Council currently has 29 Councillors who sit on the council. Twelve of these are women, equating to a 41.4% female representation. 

“As there are statistically more women than men currently living in Louth (97 men for every 100 women), it is clear to see that our local political system does not show a proportional representation of women to men. If this imbalance is not addressed, decisions and policies will continue to be made without full participation and representation of the communities we live in,” claimed the Cathaoirleach.

Joan Martin, Chief Executive of Louth County Council echoed these sentiments when she referenced the many other ways in which women can influence the decisions and policies being made at a local level by engaging in local public consultations on a wide variety of topics and issues.

She also noted that Louth Public Participation Network (PPN) with a membership of over 530 community groups, has access to local decision-making structures for community representatives to avail of. 

Ann Larkin from Women’s Aid Dundalk highlighted the many challenges women face in relation to physical sexual and gender based violence, and gave the participants an overview of the services Women’s Aid Dundalk offer to women in County Louth. She also noted the UN 16 Day Campaign, a 16 Day Campaign of activism against gender based violence and outlined the many initiatives taking place in Louth as part of the 16 Day Campaign.

Ann explained to the participants the background to the campaign and the current situation globally, “where more action is needed to ensure women in all their diversity live free of violence and coercion.” 

Orla O’Connor, Director of the National Women’s Council (NWC) was the final guest speaker at the event. She spoke about the work of the Women’s Council which is a movement-building organisation, working on the whole island of Ireland. She explained they are also part of the international movement to protect and advance women's and girls' rights. 

Orla spoke about the upcoming referendum on Gender Equality & Care in the Home. She advised the participants the government announced a referendum last March on foot of recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality. The Citizen’s Assembly recommended a referendum to remove the Constitutional limits on women; to value and recognise care in the home and the wider community; and to protect all families equally.

She said that our Constitution, contains restrictive language on women’s role in society, claiming that it was “outdated and carries a legacy of the mistreatment of women up to today. It’s important this is amended so that it reflects the value of care and everyone’s role in care right across our society.” 

She encouraged those women present to get engaged in the conversations that will take place around the Referendum and encouraged all to have their voice heard on the subject and cast their vote on Referendum Day. 

Closing remarks were delivered by SICAP Social Inclusion Manager Maeve Harkin, who spoke of the importance and value of collaboration and encouraged the women present to be more involved in decision making in a collaborative way so that all voices could come together and be heard. 

She thanked Dara MacGabhann and Noirín Coghlan, Louth Local Development Community Development Officers and Sinead McVerry Louth County Council and Anna Ryan Louth Public Participation Network, for their initiatives in bring the Equality for Women programme to this point and wished them well with the next steps in 2024.    

The launch was brought to a close by Geraldine Johnston, who reminded everyone of the findings of the report and outlined the recommendations for moving forward.

The initiative and report was co funded by Louth County Council, Louth Public Participation Network (PPN) and Louth Local Development. 

The final report is available to view on www.louthcoco.ie and www.louthlocaldevelopment.ie