Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of women cabinet ministers of the Republic of Ireland/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by PresN via FACBot (talk) 00:32, 7 April 2018 (UTC).

List of women cabinet ministers of the Republic of Ireland

 * Nominator(s): Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:23, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list because two editors have encouraged me to do so. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:23, 16 February 2018 (UTC)


 * do you feel ready to support or oppose? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:45, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'll cap my comments but I would like to see other editors comments first, mainly TRM's. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 05:24, 23 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Support this nomination. Yashthepunisher (talk) 12:05, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment. The sections "Current ministers" and "Living former ministers" are both only one line and only contain a summary of the "Name" and "Left office" columns. This successfully establishes the relevance of including that information in the list, but that summary is the purpose the WP:LEAD. It is my view, that those sections should be merged into the lead. maclean (talk) 05:36, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Done -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:54, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Comments by The Rambling Man

 * Comment the article has moved on significantly since my quick pass, so I'll cap all my comments and endeavour to re-review from scratch in due course. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:42, 20 March 2018 (UTC)


 * "Women" is not an adjective. You should not say "List of men cabinet ministers" either; compare to List of female United States Cabinet Secretaries. I'd do a review when the article is moved and mentions in the text are fixed. Reywas92Talk 20:05, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * en.wp follows reliable sources. "Women" is widely used as an adjective in reliable sources: see e.g. searches for "women government ministers" in Google Books and Google Scholar.
 * To get a bigger sample size, I took the broader term "women politicians", and compared its usage in reliable sources with "female politicians":


 * In every search, "women" is actually more widely used as an adjective than "female". Sure, the Google margins are slim and probably well within the margin of error, but JSTOR shows a more solid margin of 19%. So not only do reliable sources clearly refute your POV that "women" is not an adjective, they appear to prefer "women" to "female".
 * Please can you kindly assess this list against the Featured list criteria, rather than against your personal preferences? Thanks. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
 * Your JSTOR numbers are incorrect, and very badly so. The majority of the "1,126" are due to the name of a journal being "Women Politicians and the Media". Take out that search term and the number drops down to 568 as can be seen here. It's not a personal preference, look at any dictionary and you'll find "female, adjective" and "woman, noun". "Of women" can be used as an adjective, but not women. Well, at least in as far as proper English is concerned. That may change as using "women" as an adjective is all the rave nowadays. Mr rnddude (talk) 15:30, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Usage can change, and does change. The data above is evidence that in this case, it has changed.
 * I am bemused by the notion that results are "corrected" by omitting the title of a widely-cited journal. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:21, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My apologies, I forgot to add it to my total: 568 + 1 for the journal = 569. Mr rnddude (talk) 08:19, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I really dislike this game of excluding results you don't like. Even following your logic, your alternate search is v dodgy, because it assumes that the phrase "women politicians and the media" is used only when referencing the journal. I don't intend to check the hundreds of hits, but the assumption is not plausible.
 * However, even if someone was to accept this manipulation of the data, the fact remains that even your manipulated data still shows "women politicians" is v widely used in scholarly sources. So the argument that "women politicians" or "women ministers" is unacceptable grammar has clearly been rejected by a wide range of scholars and scholarly publications. Since this is acceptable scholarly usage, why are you trying to exclude it from this encyclopedia? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:01, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Since you're asking I'll clarify, I did not exclude "women politicians and the media" from the search, I set the advanced search parameters only to exclude the title of the journal (or tried to). I wanted to see how many of the 1,100+ search results were from the journal, and not based on the article title. In this case something like 600. I have serious doubts that there are too many articles which use the phrase "women politicians and the media". In fact a search for "items titled" "women politicians and the media" only returned 14 hits and only 1 of those was an article (the rest were chapters from a 1996 book by the same name). I'm sure my results on JSTOR are skewed a bit, but not as much as yours were. Do a Ctrl+F search of your results for the phrase "Women politicians and the media". I got 13/25 on the first page (i.e. more than half). Though, as you'll see in my comments, this isn't a sufficient sticking point for me to oppose. I don't like it, but I'm not going to force you at gunpoint to write to my "sensibilities", if you will. Hope that alleviates your concerns. Mr rnddude (talk) 12:37, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Comments by Mr rnddude

 * Well, since I'm here, may as well. Mr rnddude (talk) 16:15, 12 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Citations
 * Citation 39 has a harv error that needs rectifying "Harv error: link from CITEREFMcNamaraMooney2000 doesn't point to any citation."
 * It seems I hadn't implemented harv. Now done.  Hope it is all OK. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
 * Two were still coming up with harv problems, but I've taken care of them. 1 was a misspelled name, and 1 was missing a year. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:50, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Citations 2, 6–8, 15, 17, 37, 38 and 40 are all missing identifiers: "ISSN, JSTOR, etc".
 * ISSNs added where available (tho neither Newstalk nor TheJournal.ie have ISSNs). Are there any others which still have missing identifiers? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Citations 7 and 30 you've explained, but RTE News (17) and Irish Examiner (31) have the tag. If you can't find an ISSN for those then okay, if you can please add them too. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I added an ISSN for the Irish Examiner. Both http://www.worldcat.org/ and https://issn.org yielded no identifiers for Newstalk and TheJournal.ie. However, worldcat gives an OCLC number for RTE News.  Should I use that? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:45, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, an OCLC is fine. Mr rnddude (talk) 12:47, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * OCLC added. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Inconsistent use of "location" in citations, McNamara/Mooney has it but Offen and Galligan/Buckley don't. You're also missing an anchor from all of those references... probably why you have a harv error.
 * Done for the books. Should I add location for the newspapers too? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You don't have to add a location for the newspapers, just need to be consistent about where you add them. If you add a location for O'Toole and Dooney 2009, then the tags will disappear because all the books have publisher and location added. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:01, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * p. ~293 p. ~295 - Approximately page 295?!?!?!
 * Yes, that was ugly. The problem is that the gbooks copy of Galligan & Buckley which I was using does not include page numbers in the source. I was using Google's page numbering, but that turned out to be inconsistent, hence the "approximately".  So I have removed page numbers from the Galligan & Buckley refs. Note that this had the side-effect of consolidating the Galligan & Buckley refs at #4, so the numbering of all refs after #4 has changed. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:23, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If you know which chapter of the book then you can add "loc=" and use that. Just a suggestion. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but chapters doesn't work 'cos Galligan & Buckley is all one chapter in "Politics in the Republic of Ireland", edited by John Coakley, Michael Gallagher. However Galligan & Buckley do use sub-headings, so I will try adding a few of them. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:04, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Lede
 * Why does almost the entire lede have citations? I've never reviewed a featured list candidate, but, this is a bit unusual. If everything in the lede needs citations, why don't the second half of paragraph 2 and paragraph 5 not have them. Also, with articles there is a four paragraph limit, does the same limit apply to lists?
 * I think there are 2 points there
 * I have tweaked the lede down to 4 paras, by merging para2 with para3
 * citations in lede: MOS:CITELEAD says "the presence of citations in the introduction is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article", and "Leads are usually written at a greater level of generality than the body, and information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source; there is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus". Are there any citations there which you consider redundant? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
 * All good. Mr rnddude (talk) 12:47, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The oldest living woman former minister is Mary O'Rourke. - Worldwide, or just in Ireland. This ought to be clarified.
 * I have tweaked that para a few times, so it now reads All but two of the women who have served as ministers since 1918 are still alive. The first Irish woman minister, Constance Markievicz, died in 1927, and the third, Eileen Desmond, died in 2005. Ireland's oldest living woman former minister is Mary O'Rourke.. I hope that is OK. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:04, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's fine. Mr rnddude (talk) 12:47, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Above you were talking to TRM about a "gender-balanced cabinet", if there are 15 members to a cabinet then is it even possible to have a "gender-balanced cabinet"? or can you have just partially-filled cabinets?
 * Yes, there can be partially-filled cabinets. See the Constitution section of the list. As to the question of how to define "gender-balanced cabinet", you'd better ask the National Women's Council of Ireland, who used the phrase, or Enda Kenny who said "50:50". I have found no sources which discuss how to define half of fifteen; the mathematical rounding dilemma which troubles you and TRM doesn't seem to be a concern for Irish journalists, scholars or politicians.  -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:17, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * History
 * The first woman cabinet minister ... - I know you're going to stick steadfast to using "woman" as an adjective, but "female". The same applies to all further instances.
 * Sorry, but no. Per evidence above, "woman" as an acceptable adjective in scholarly sources on politics. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:26, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * When the Second Dáil assembled in August 1921, Markievicz continued as Minister for Labour,[24] but her post was no longer at cabinet level in the Government of the Second Dáil.[21] Markievicz and other ministers opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty resigned from the Government on 9 January 1922.[21][24] No women were members of the Executive Council of the 1922–1937 Irish Free State. More than 58 years elapsed between Markievicz leaving office and the appointment in December 1979 of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn as the second woman in cabinet. - This seems weirdly ordered to me. Wouldn't the second sentence of the second paragraph flow more naturally if it was placed at the end of the second sentence of the first paragraph. That would read as "Markievicz ... resigned from the Government on 9 January 1922. More than 58 years elapsed between Markievicz leaving office ...". They just seem to follow on from each other much better. You could even rephrase them to really flow: "Markievicz and other ministers opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty resigned from the Government on 9 January 1922. More than 58 years elapsed from her resignation to the appointment of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn in December of 1979, the second woman to serve in the cabinet." Or any variation thereof. You could even put "As such, no women were members of the Executive Council of the 1922–1937 Irish Free State." at the end of that paragraph. I'd rephrase it to As such, no members of the Executive Council of the 1922–1937 Irish Free State were women". Since I've effectively changed the whole section I am proposing: When the Second Dáil assembled in August 1921, Markievicz continued as Minister for Labour,[24] but her post was no longer at cabinet level in the Government of the Second Dáil.[21] Markievicz and other ministers opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty resigned from the Government on 9 January 1922.[21][24] More than 58 years elapsed from her resignation to the appointment of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn in December of 1979, the second woman to serve in the cabinet. As such, no members of the Executive Council of the 1922–1937 Irish Free State were women. Or any variation thereof.
 * Sorry, but I find your construction ugly and confusing. It breaks chronological order, and confusingly implies that the lack of women in the Irish Free State was somehow a consequence of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn's appointment 42 years after the Irish Free State's demise. There are two other reasons for my structure: a) the reason for ending the Markievicz para with her resignation is that her pioneering position is discussed in all the sources as a landmark, a key phase in the role of Irish women in politics. It's not appropriate to muddle that up with the v difft era which followed as the the revolutionary era of Irish politics drew to a close. b) the post-revolutionary phase which began in 1922 saw a massive retreat from the feminism of the revolutionary era.  Over the next 2 decades, the growing equality of women was reversed on many fronts, such as the banning of contraception in the 1920s, the automatic dismissal of women from the public service when they married, and the removal in the 1937 constitution of formal equality. This was reflected in political participation too (see number of women elected in each Dáil). I didn't want to go into that, because I felt that a brief summary could be misleading and a longer para would be a diversion; but if you like, I can have another go at a sentence or two on why 1922 marked a turning point. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have added a whole para on the period from the 1920s onwards in between the Markievicz and Geoghegan-Quinn paras. How does that look? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:54, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * They also found that women in the Irish cabinet are twice as likely to hold a social portfolio (48%) than an economic portfolio (24%). - Eh... meaning? and/or significance?
 * You're right, that needed context. I have added the following sentence: By contrast, only 17% of men held social portfolios, and 52% held economic or foreign affairs portfolio. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:16, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In 2014, then Taoiseach ... - the then Taoiseach? I'm not sure if that's the correct way to do it or just the way I'd write it.
 * ... had pledged if re-elected to appoint a cabinet "50:50 on merit, of men and women" I'd put "if re-elected" at the end of the sentence. I.e. "... had pledged to appoint a cabinet "50:50 on merit, of men and women" if re-elected". I feel the need to preempt her by informing her that a predetermined outcome is by definition not based on merit... she could have an all female cabinet if she's appointing solely on merit (or vice versa... but we don't want to talk about that).
 * Yes, that was a wee bit too terse. I have reworded it as Taoiseach Enda Kenny had pledged that if re-elected he would appoint a cabinet "50:50 on merit". As to the rest, a) Enda Kenny is a man (and twice Mayo man of the year), b) some day in a pub, we could have a fun chat about how assumptions that the preponderance of men in positions of power is due to merit rather than rules and structures which block women. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:34, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * a) Ah, I've been reading it as Edna. Fair enough, thanks for pointing it out. In which case preempt him. b) I'm sure we could. I'm not really assuming that men are getting more positions of power than women on merit, merely making a point that if it's just about meritocracy there's no reason to assume it'll be 50/50. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:55, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair point, but Enda is i) a Mayo man, and ii) a politician ... so he's covering all bases. In both roles, keeping ppl happy sometimes matters more than being right, or even coherent. Like Shrub, Enda has been much misunderestimated; but unlike Shrub, he never developed an invasion fetish. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:10, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * More comments coming soon. When I've gone through the table and graph and long form citations... Mr rnddude (talk) 16:15, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the review, . I'll reply individually to your points. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:27, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I have now responded to all of your points. Would you like to review them and see if you think there are any needing more work? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:33, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've left replies to individual points. I'll let you know if there's more work when I get the chance to do a second pass. Mr rnddude (talk) 12:47, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I am glad we were able to resolve all issues so far, and look fwd to seeing what you find on your second pass. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I had forgotten about this, and am coming back to it now. I only have a couple new comments, both in the bibliography section.
 * When referencing a chapter of a book, add chapter page numbers to it. I am referring to Galligan, Yvonne; Buckley, Fiona (2017). "Chapter 9: Women in Politics". In Coakley, John; Gallagher, Michael. Politics in the Republic of Ireland (6th ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 978-1138119451. Caution: Missing pagenums for book chapter?.
 * Alphabetical sort error: Coakely should come before Coleman.


 * Once these have been addressed: support. Mr rnddude (talk) 23:11, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks,
 * I have moved Coakely should before Coleman.
 * No page numbers available for Galligan&Buckley, 'cos I was using the Gbooks preview, which is an ebook with no page numbers. We discussed this above, where my last response was that I would try using section headings. Sorry for not getting back to you on the results of that, which were that a) the sections were too long to be useful pointers, and b) preview was no longer showing me some relevant pages. However, I ended up using some of the book's appendices for other refs (ref#46 & ref#71 in the current revision), and found page numbers on Amazon preview.  I will try now to use Amazon preview to get page nums for the Galligan & Buckley refs, and will let you know promptly how that works out. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:40, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Damn: Aamazon now seems to be giving me only the Kindle version, and I can't find whatever link was giving me page numbers.
 * I think the only solution is for me to buy a print copy of the book. I will order it later today, and hopefully receive my copy early next week. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:23, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * - Cool your jets there bud. I'm not going to make you buy the book just to put in page numbers. You're dedicated to this article (list), I'll give you that much. Mr rnddude (talk) 09:30, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * - Page numbers 263 to 292 per whatever edition this is. Your welcome. Save that money for something else. Mr rnddude (talk) 09:40, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for being so helpful,.
 * That preview is of the 5th edition' from 2010. It looks like the page numbers I used for refs 46&71 were from a later edition, 'cos they don't tally with the 5th. Wish I knew where that preview I found earlier was.
 * Anyway, the 5th edition chapter on women is by Galligan only (no Buckley), so it's likely significantly different.
 * So I reckon buying the book is the best solution, then I can get it all properly referenced. I already had the book on my buy-someday list, 'cos it will  be useful for a lot of my studies of Irish politics, so I am just bringing the purchase fwd a bit.  And yes, I am a bit dedicated to this article; if promoted, it will be my first featured page ... and even if it isn't promoted I still want to do the best job I can on a topic which is a live political issue. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:32, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Comments by Bilorv

 * Support: all my comments have been satisfactorily addressed. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 11:44, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Many thanks, . I have really enjoyed working with you, and I think your insights have spurred a lot of improvements. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:41, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Anyone willing to buy a book in order to properly source an article, even in part, deserves applause. Source review passed. The only point of contention is the awkward (to my ears, even though I'm generally descriptivist instead of prescriptivist on the English language) double-noun construction of "women cabinet ministers", but some searching shows that a) it's not an American vs British/Irish thing like I thought, but also b) "women (politician)" is used by many highly-reputable sources, as is the more standardly-grammatical "female (politician)". Which leaves it firmly in the realm of "non-opposable". Also, for fun, note the categories at the bottom of the list: Female government ministers of the Republic of Ireland, Lists of female political office-holders in Ireland... and Lists of women government ministers by nationality. What a mess. So... promoted! -- Pres N  20:46, 6 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.