South Dublin County Council Has A Majority Women - But From What Class?

South Dublin County Council recently made history as the first in Ireland to achieve a female majority, with 21 out of 40 seats now held by women.

While this milestone is celebrated by some as progress toward gender equality, what does it actually mean for working class women in our area?

The majority ruling group on the council is made up of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and some Independents. Since the formation of the new council in June 2024 it’s been business as usual for them.

They have voted against budget amendments to increase rates for big businesses that would be used to roll out a major retrofitting programme of council homes - saving ordinary people money on energy bills.

They’ve been a block on change.

Most of these women are from the same establishment parties that have caused a housing crisis that has left working class women languishing on housing lists for decades.

Instead of looking at the optics of a majority female council, we should be examining what it means in practice: as socialists we think that such changes in representation do not address the systemic challenges faced by working-class women.

Socialists emphasize that the fundamental division in society is class division - most of us work, others live off the backs of our work. The capitalist system perpetuates exploitation by concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few, regardless of their gender.

Therefore, simply increasing the number of women in political positions does not challenge the capitalist class structures that oppress the working class. In fact, women politicians can join with ruling class men to make life more difficult for working class women.

Just look at Margaret Thatcher or Joan Burton- both these women used state power to kick the whole working class.

The concept of “identity politics” often focuses on increasing representation of marginalized groups, such as women, within existing power structures without addressing the underlying economic systems that actually produce class exploitation and inequality.

This leads to a superficial form of progress that leaves the material conditions -low pay, precarious work, precarious housing - of working-class women unchanged.

For working-class women, our primary concerns are economic security, access to affordable housing, healthcare, childcare and fair wages.

Without a commitment to revolutionary socialist politics with an aim to put the working class in the driving seat, to use that to redistribute wealth and dismantle exploitation, the presence of more women in political office will not lead to substantive improvements in our lives.

While a majority-female council in South Dublin represents a “symbolic victory” for some, putting upper and middle class women into political power, it does not address the root causes of the oppression faced by working-class women.

Working class men and women will have to unite and fight these establishment councillors and their kin in the Dáil if we want to win a better life for all working people.