Seven Strategic Objectives

The National Strategy for Women and Girls has a single, simple vision: An Ireland where women and girls can thrive in a gender-equal society.

To realise this vision, the Strategy sets out seven objectives, each corresponding to one or more areas of women’s experience where public policy action is required to address gender inequalities. Detailed actions are identified to support the achievement of these seven high level objectives.

• Being Counted: The people who design our policies and laws take me into account
• Being Me: I can live free of harmful gender norms and stereotypes
• Being a Leader: I can pursue my ambition and achieve my potential in any field
• Being Safe: I can live free of violence and harassment
• Having a Fair Share: I have a fair share of economic and financial power
• Being Well: I am enabled to enjoy wellbeing throughout my life
• Being Supported: I am supported when I give care and when I need care

Strategic objective: embed gender mainstreaming in public policymaking.

Gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting help to ensure that all Ireland’s policies and laws are developed in a way that fully considers their impact on women’s equality.

In more detail:

• Introduce mandatory training in gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting for public officials with a role in public policy making and budget allocation.
• Collect and report equality data in a standardised, comparable way, adhering to equality monitoring principles, so that the data can meaningfully inform public policy and budget allocation.
• Embed a gender equality perspective in the development and evaluation of all national policy frameworks, including in major cross-cutting areas such as climate change and economic development.
• Strengthen the practice of gender budgeting across all government departments.
• Include gender equality as a specific funding objective for community-focused funding programmes across government.
• Develop mechanisms to ensure that public services are gender responsive.

Strategic objective: Reduce the prevalence and power of harmful gender norms and stereotypes.

The situation of women and girls is adversely affected by the development and expression of patriarchal gender norms that create negative perceptions of women and girls. Adherence to patriarchal gender norms undermines progress on gender equality and therefore has wide-ranging adverse implications for society.

In more detail:

• Provide gender equality education and education environments that directly counter patriarchal gender norms, including restrictive masculinities.
• Increase the visibility of positive female role models, particularly in male-dominated fields, including political, sport, and business leadership.
• Seek and avail of opportunities to communicate the continued importance of action on women’s equality across all sectors.
• Reduce people’s exposure to harmful gender norms and stereotypes, including in online spaces.
• Develop actions to counter harmful misinformation related to gender equality.
• Develop policy to address the impacts of restrictive masculinities on women and girls.

Strategic objective: Enable equal leadership, visibility, and participation of women.

A gender-equal society is characterised by visible female leadership, on a par with men, across all sectors. Gender balance at the top of organisations in all sectors is essential, not just for equity, but for better decision-making.

In more detail:

• Continue and expand supports to promote and improve gender balance at local government and increase opportunities for women to enter politics.
• Improve the gender balance at board and senior executive levels in all sectors, including business, public administration, education, sport, and the voluntary sector.
• Support women into leadership roles at local level, in particular women and girls from marginalised communities.
• Address the imbalance of visibility between men and women in the arts and in media.
• Increase the numbers of women serving in the Defence Forces and An Garda Síochána
• Ensure the meaningful participation of women in the development and evaluation of climate action policy, both domestically and internationally.
• Increase girls’ and women’s uptake of STEM and business subjects.
• Remove barriers to women’s equal participation in sport as participants, sports club members, coaches, managers, and spectators; in the governance of sporting organisations; and in sports media representation and coverage.

Strategic objective: Eradicate violence against women and harassment of women.

Women in Ireland experience high levels and multiple forms of violence. While both men and women experience crime, a gendered pattern is clear from statistics, with women more likely to experience domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment-related offences in public spaces and online.

In more detail:

• Develop initiatives to prevent violence against women, and to identify and address its causes, taking account of the diversity of women’s and girls’ situations and needs.
• Put in place effective measures to prevent the harassment of women in public spaces and online, and to identify and address its causes.
• Deliver high-quality services to support women and children who have experienced domestic, sexual or gender-based violence or harassment.
• Provide access to secure, long-term housing for women experiencing domestic violence.
• Reduce people’s exposure to violent and extreme pornography.
• Provide effective education for children and young people on the impacts and harms of pornography.
• Eliminate gender-based bullying and harassment in education settings.
• Improve access to justice for women and girls.
• Embed survivor experiences and voices into the justice system to make it more gender responsive.
• Promote women’s leadership in peacebuilding and an end to violence against women across the globe.

Strategic objective: Empower women through economic and financial equality.

Gendered patterns in the labour market shut women out of many careers and increase their likelihood of working in low-paid jobs. Women are also more likely than men to be in precarious work. For older women, the gender pension gap is significant, at 35%.

In more detail:

• Remove barriers to labour market participation by women, with a focus on groups vulnerable to labour market exclusion, such as lone parents and women returning to the workforce.
• Ensure equal work for equal pay through mandatory pay and pension transparency.
• Support initiatives to make female students aware of opportunities in sectors where women are traditionally under-represented, including through developing partnerships with business.
• Increase the proportion of Ireland’s entrepreneurs who are women.

Provide affordable, high quality and accessible early learning and care and school age childcare nationwide, with increased public investment and public management of the sector, including the introduction of an element of State-led provision

• Further enhance the scope of family leaves and increase benefit rates by introducing a pay related model.
• Take steps to address issues, including low pay, that arise in sectors of the labour market that are dominated by women.
• Develop initiatives to identify, measure and reduce sexism in the workplace.
• Introduce a Family Friendly Workplace Certification Scheme.
• Develop measures to address the Gender Pension Gap, including for older women experiencing poverty due to past restrictions on their labour market participation.
• Promote female succession of family businesses and farms, to help address property ownership disparities and reduce the gender wealth gap.

Strategic Objective: Enable women to maximise their health and wellbeing throughout their lives.

The wellbeing of women and girls in Ireland is influenced by a wide variety of factors, both individual and societal. Structural inequalities and systemic barriers can reduce the likelihood of a woman enjoying health and wellbeing through her life course.

In more detail:

• Support initiatives that enable women to nurture and protect their health and wellbeing at all stages of their lives.
• Enable women and girls to be physically active throughout their lives by creating safe, welcoming environments for active travel and for personal and organised sport and activity aimed at all levels and abilities.
• Address unmet need in the provision of gender sensitive and trauma informed mental health services to women across the life course.
• Advance the provision of sexual and reproductive healthcare and related leaves and benefits.
• Expand services for women at risk of or affected by cardiovascular disease and increase awareness and education of gender specific symptoms.
• Enhance the education, health literacy and build the awareness of girls and boys in relation to the full spectrum of menstrual health, including menopause.
• Develop programmes to enable women to participate fully in social activity across the life course, including older women, women with caring responsibilities, and women who may be marginalised in any way.
• Advance the representation and participation of women and girls in cultural life, including under-represented and marginalised groups.
• Increase the range of choices available to older women living alone to remain living at home.
• Support women and girls directly affected by environments changing due to climate change and develop initiatives to address the impacts of climate change on the physical and mental health of women and girls.

Strategic objective: Acknowledge, reward, and more equally share caring.

Women provide a large majority of the paid and unpaid care on which society depends. This includes care for children, people experiencing health difficulties (either physical or mental), older people, disabled people, and anyone else who needs care. A more equitable sharing of care between women and men is key to the realisation of equality for women and girls.

In more detail:

• Expand family leave entitlements to enable parents to take leave from the workplace to care for their children while the children are under one.
• Support flexible working options, and one’s right to avail of these, so that women and men are afforded greater choice in terms of how they manage the interaction between care and work responsibilities.
• Provide affordable, high-quality, and accessible early learning and care and school-age childcare to allow parents with child caring responsibilities to thrive in work and education.
• Challenge trends where women can be pressurised, particularly by online messaging, into particular care roles.
• Support programmes to enable young caregivers, predominantly girls, to participate in play and recreation.
• Further develop and expand supports for young parents under 25.
• Seek ways to mitigate the negative resource and health impacts on women of time spent engaged in unpaid care for family members.
• Develop a strategic approach to address instances of racism against care workers.
• Take steps to recognise and mitigate the gender dimension to the care challenges faced by older women.
• Continue to significantly increase the income disregards for Carer’s Allowance with a view to phasing out the means test.