The government announced plans to establish women-only professorships in Third Level institutions, 42% think these plans are not necessary.

Reach Insights Press Release

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4th December 2018

57% think that there are too few women in high political office.

71% think the ideal situation is to have equal numbers of women and men in high political office and business.

41% think that gender quotas are a good way to ensure fair representation. 

41% do not think that gender quotas are successful in ensuring that positions are filled by the most qualified candidate

Gender inequality issues have once again been thrown into the spotlight following the incident during the award of the inaugural Ballon d’Or for women’s football to Lyon striker Ada Hegerberg on 3rd December. Ada Hegerberg gave an empowering speech encouraging more girls to play football, saying that the award is a ‘huge step for women’s football’. Her remarks were however overshadowed when she was asked by the presenter to twerk live on stage. Such gender inequality issues are not isolated to sport and were the focus of a nationally representative survey of 1,000 adults in Ireland which iReach Insights conducted following the government’s recent announcement of plans to establish women-only professorships in Third-level institutions as a measure to tackle structural gender inequality. iReach’s survey was carried out to understand the national perspectives on gender issues in both business and political office in Ireland. When asked about the plans to establish women-only professorships in Third Level institutions 42% of adults think these plans are not necessary and a third (32%) think these plans will be successful in ensuring the proper representation of women in Third-level education. Thinking about politics in Ireland today, 57% consider that there are too few women in high political office. The majority (71%) think the ideal situation when it comes to the number of women and men in high political office is to have equal men and women. Thinking about high political office, 64% believe that it is easier for men to get these roles. In business, thinking about Ireland today 53% think there are too few women in top executive business positions. The majority (71%) think the ideal situation for the gender balance of the business world is to have the same number of men as women. 12% think having more women than there currently are but still not as many women as men. 66% think it is easier for men to get top executive business positions than women. Forty one percent agree that gender quotas are a good way to ensure fair representation but 41% do not think that gender quotas are successful in ensuring that position are filled by the most qualified candidates.

About iReach Insights

iReach Insights provides a range of research and market intelligence services in Ireland and Europe. iReach has built a Consumer Decisions Research Panel of 40,000 members in Ireland, delivering robust research insights. The survey questions were included in the Nationally Representative iReach Consumer Decisions Omnibus run between the 22nd November and the 28th November and has a 3% Confidence Interval and 95% Confidence Level.

iReach Insights Limited – Temple Hall, Temple Road, Blackrock, CO. Dublin, IRELAND.

iReach Managing Director: Oisin Byrne
T: 01-214 3740 or email: PR@ireachhq.com