The episode discusses how the county council has changed since the 1980s, the obstacles to increasing participation by women in local politics and the different experiences women can face as candidates and after election.
Also joining the podcast is gender and politics researcher Claire McGing who, with Pauline Cullen, Professor of Sociology at Maynooth University, wrote ‘Women Beyond the Dail: Access, Representation & Retention in Irish Local Government'.
Cllr Fitzgerald references his trade union background saying he found women “to be tougher than men and damn sight straighter, and you never had to look over your shoulder if you were in a row. They were always there with you.”
He says the same applies to women in politics and he would like to see more women encouraged to participate in politics.
When he was first elected in 1985 there were two women on the then 29-seat council. By comparison there were 14 women elected to the now 40-seat council in 2024.
Cllr Adenuga talks about how she got involved in local politics and while focusing on the positives, she also acknowledges that, once elected, you face scrutiny.
“People literally scrutinise your life.” She also said, “women get a lot of, ‘see the way she's dressed,’ ‘look at her hair,’ ‘oh, she's added weight,’ all those kinds of things that tend to pull women down and make them feel less than themselves.”
The discussion looks at the challenges to women standing for election including how others see them. While canvassing in 2019 someone asked, “do you think you're intelligent enough to run?”
She believes the question was asked, “because they saw me as a woman, like, oh, what would she know? And women get asked worse questions. So those kinds of things are barriers that will stop women from running.”
Clare McGing says “unfortunately gendered harassment, abuse and intimidation of women politicians is not exclusive to Ireland. It's a global problem and an increasing global problem. We have studies from multiple political systems to show that this is happening both to women politicians and women candidates and others who are active in political spaces, both in online and in-person formats. And it's absolutely a barrier and a constraint, an additional one on top of the others that women have to face.”
She added, “I think we have to be clear about this, this is an attempt to silence women. It's a form of backlash to their participation in public life, and it's a real threat to democracy. Often the very high-profile cases of this tend to focus on national politicians or parliamentarians, but in actual fact, there is evidence to suggest that local councillors are at a higher risk or are more vulnerable to this because they are so accessible to people.”
Local Lens is presented by Elaine Keogh, and the executive producer is Ailish Shaw. Please contact locallens@meathcoco.ie if you have any questions on the podcast or to provide feedback.
Stepping Forward: Participation, Representation and Local Democracy is available now wherever you get your podcasts.