Diary reveals scarcity of women in top jobs

As a diary, the IPA Yearbook has been overtaken by electronic gadgets. But its quirkiness as a diary remains amusing, writes Vincent Browne.

For instance, it notes that 2 January was the 150th anniversary of the death of King Frederick William of Prussia.

Not many people know that. Not many people want to know that.

For next Thursday, 6 January, it records another 150th anniversary - this time, the birth of Victor Horta, Belgian architect and designer.

The diary entries are a bit odd as well. We are alerted, for instance, that on Wednesday, there is an international conference on sustainability in Hamilton, New Zealand.

But as a directory of the powerful, influential and well-placed, this is the primary source. Everyone is there - from government departments, semi-states and quangos to major companies and the media.

Even public relations, for God's sake. It's all there - and has been since the diary was first published some time in the 1960s.

I have been looking through the 2011 diary to note the number of women in influential positions in Ireland right now- or rather a few months ago, when the diary went to press. It offers quite an insight.

We all know about the four Marys - Mary McAleese, Mary Coughlan, Mary Harney and Mary Hanafin. One is the President, the other three senior ministers, and that doesn't seem too bad for starters.

Neither is the presence of women among the judiciary too bad: 16 District Judges are women out of 63, around one in four; 12 women out of 38 Circuit Court judges, better than one in four; but only five women out of 36 High Court judges and two out of eight Supreme Court judges.

There are just three women out of 16 heads of government departments. Of 66 ambassadors (or representatives of equivalent status) representing us abroad (why so many?),only five are women.

That figure may now be six, but why are there so few women?

Of about 70 government agencies, many of them with chairmen and chief executives (and therefore about 100 leadership positions), only ten are women.

One of the most powerful positions in our administration is that of manager of a local authority, either city manager or county manager.

There are 34 of these and only two are women: Martina Moloney, county manager in Galway, and Jackie Maguire in Leitrim. I understand there has been only one other women in this position, Anne McGuinness, who was formerly county manager in Westmeath.

Of 39 hospitals, only five have women as chief executives or in a similar position. Each of the three maternity hospitals in Dublin has a man as ''master'' and, as far as I know, this has always been the case.

Of approximately 130 state-sponsored bodies, only 29 have women as chief executives or in a similar position. None of the universities or institutes of higher education has a woman as head.

Not a single financial institution - bar the stock exchange - has a woman as head.

If a similar pattern of employment were to apply to, say, Catholics in Northern Ireland, or blacks in a southern state of America where black people were close to half of the population, or in apartheid South Africa, wouldn't we be appalled?

Why is there no similar response to such discrimination here, or is this different?

Towards the back of the book, there is a page offering advice on how important people should be addressed.

Helpfully, it says at the top of the page: ''There is no one form of address used for women who occupy (the important positions)".

We are advised to use the titles ''President'', ''Taoiseach'', ''Minister'', ''Senator'', ''Councillor'', ''His Excellency the most Reverenced'' (for the Papal Nuncio), ''His Excellency ambassador'', ''Mr Justice (whatever)" and ''Your Grace (archbishop)" or ''My Lord (archbishop)", when addressing these important personages.

Wouldn't you have thought that, in a republic, where everyone is supposed to be equal, we wouldn't be bothered with this gibberish.

Everyone should be called by their first name or full name, except in formalised settings, such as meetings or courts, where the use of titles accords with the functions being discharged.

Titles are instruments of subjugation and domination.

Their use outside formalised settings should be criminalised.

Also at the back of the book, there is a section on statistics, four pages, for instance, being given over to international comparisons, including the top rate of income tax for 2007, when Ireland's top tax rate was 42 per cent, the same as it is now.

In that year, the top tax rate in Australia was 48.5 per cent, in Belgium it was 45.1 per cent, 46.4 per cent in Canada, 55 per cent in Denmark, 49.2 per cent in Finland, 43.3 per cent in Germany,44.6 per cent in Italy, 47.1 per cent in Japan, 52 per cent in the Netherlands and 56.6 per cent in Sweden. Every one of these countries is faring better than we are now.

Higher income tax rates don't seem to have caused them too much trouble.

So why would it be so bad here?