Health, Beauty and Lifestyle with Denise McNamara

The number of female candidates vying to be elected has jumped across the two Galway local authorities for the 2024 polls. The figures collated by the See Her Elected group, which aims to encourage women to run for local politics, reveals that female candidates account for 32.69% in Galway City or 17 women out of 52 candidates.

In County Galway, female candidates account for 22.78% or 18 out of 79 candidates.

In the last local elections in 2019 there were 15 women out of 78 (18%) putting their names forward in the county with 12 women running out of 47 (25%) in the city.

The statistics show those local elections had similar numbers running in 2014 when 14 women ran out of 74 rurally while in the city 10 out of 38 put themselves up for election in their communities.

“We’ve had lots of women from County Galway in our training programme with See Her Elected, which is an award-winning, Government-funded programme,” explains the organisation’s communication’s manager Mairead O’ Shea.

Nationally 677 female candidates will contest this year’s local elections, which is a record number at 31% of overall candidates.

“This is a marked increase since 2009 which female candidates accounted for just 17.2% of overall candidates and also in 2019 when women made up 28.4% of overall candidates.”

There are two local electoral areas where no women are running – Moate in Co Westmeath and Corca Dhuibhne in Co Kerry.

During the last local election, just 18% of councillors elected to Galway County Council were women; the percentage was 28% in the Galway City Council. Nationally the percentage was 26% female.

Almost 40% of the total number of female candidates running for election this year availed of support, training or resources from the organisation.

Pictured: Mairead O’Shea, Communications Manager of See Her Elected (SHE).