About

About

The Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality was established by Oireachtas resolution in July 2019 to ‘consider gender equality and make recommendations to the Oireachtas to advance gender equality by bringing forward proposals to:
challenge the remaining barriers and social norms and attitudes that facilitate gender discrimination towards girls and boys, women and men;

• identify and dismantle economic and salary norms that result in gender inequalities, and reassess the economic value placed on work traditionally held by women;
• in particular, seek to ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in the workplace, politics and public life;
• recognise the importance of early years parental care and seek to facilitate greater work-life balance;
• examine the social responsibility of care and women and men’s co-responsibility for care, especially within the family; and
• scrutinise the structural pay inequalities that result in women being disproportionately represented in low pay sectors.’

The resolution also asked the Assembly ‘to prioritise the proposals, which may include policy, legislative or constitutional change, having regard to the legal requirements and the costs versus the potential impact’. It specified that membership of the Assembly would consist of 100 persons – a Chairperson1 and 99 citizens entitled to vote at a referendum, recruited at national level and randomly selected in accordance with best recruitment practice, as advised by industry experts, so as to be broadly representative of Irish society.

The Resolution also asked the Assembly ‘to prioritise the proposals, which may include policy, legislative or constitutional change, having regard to the legal requirements and the costs versus the potential impact’.