WCI Attend ‘National Strategy for Women and Girls’ Engagement Event

Women’s Collective Ireland (WCI) were delighted to receive an invitation to last week’s engagement event with The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration & Youth (DCEDIY).

The event, supported by the National Women’s Council of Ireland, allowed us to come together to discuss the development of the next National Strategy for Women and Girls. During the event, WCI listened to and discussed the initial findings from consultations with similar groups and organisations during a roundtable discussion - focusing on how to identify gaps within the findings is far.

Last year, WCI came together as an national organisation to create a unique survey to better understand the urgent needs of the women and girls within our local communities. To ensure that their voices were heard in the upcoming National Strategy for Women and Girls, WCI developed and distributed a survey to gather the input of women throughout the country to inform our submission to DCEDIY. Within the survey, women were asked a series of open-ended questions along with questions that simply required a yes/no/not sure response. Some key findings from our survey detailed how:

• 80% felt that women and men were not equal in Ireland today.

• 83% felt that men could do more to improve the lives of women and girls.

• 92% felt that the Government could do more to improve the lives of women and girls.

When asked ‘Are there any individuals or groups that are a concern for you right now?’

• 72% of women who responded that there were[concerned], with the majority of those stating far right groups were a concern, due to their promotion of hate, divisiveness and rolling back of equality and rights of women and LGBTQ+ and minority groups.

The overarching results of the survey revealed to WCI that for many women, and for the majority of participants who answered the survey, women’s safety and men’s violence against women remained the top concern. To read more on this, please see WCI’s Submission to Department in the ‘Pre-budget and Joint Submissions’ section of our publications page.

WCI were grateful for the opportunity to meet the new Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration & Youth - Minister Norma Foley. Engagement events such as this are extremely important to WCI as they allow us to continue to raise the voices of grassroots women at these events to ensure that all women are heard.

Pictured left to right -

• WCI National Programme Coordinator, Vivienne Glanville.

• WCI CEO, Miriam Holt.

• Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration & Youth, Norma Foley TD.

• WCI South Kerry Coordinator, Cathy McKeefry.