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

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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) [1].[reply]

List of women cabinet ministers of the Republic of Ireland[edit]

List of women cabinet ministers of the Republic of Ireland (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:23, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because two editors have encouraged me to do so[2][3]. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:23, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from BeatlesLedTV (talk) 05:24, 23 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
;Comments from BeatlesLedTV
  • Some paragraphs should be combined; some are only one sentence and most don't have references. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 06:14, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Refs added to lede, plus a little text. I could merge paras 3 & 4, but would prefer rhem separate to mark a topic shift. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:39, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tables need scope rows and cols per MOS:ACCESS
    Done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:50, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why are the headings top aligned?
    Because on narrower displays, some of them will wordwrap. Top alignment looks more visually coherent, and avoids giving prominence to wrapped headings. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:50, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I honestly think that looks bad. I think it'll be fine if it's not top-aligned. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 06:14, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:41, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • What's with the "12=", "14=", and "16="?
    That's the column for order of appointment. The cases with an "=" are when two women received their first cabinet appointment on the same day, which is effectively simultaneous. I don't recall ever seeing any sources which indicate the order in which seals of office are handed out when members of a new cabinet all go to Áras an Uachtaráin to collect their seals of office from the President, and I think any ranking on that basis would be trivialising. So best to count them as as simultaneous. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:50, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why don't you just rowspan these numbers and remove the equal sign? BeatlesLedTV (talk) 06:14, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Done.[4] I don't like it, because I think it makes it harder to identify which rows belong to each minister; I'd prefer to revert, if that's OK with you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:57, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think it looks fine but it's not my list so you can revert it. But I'm sure other editors would say the same thing. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 16:47, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have reverted [5] for now. I think the unmerged cells have 2 advantages: a) in most cases the first cell's boundaries delineate the vertical scope of the person in, so it is confusing to lose that delineation in the cases of simultaneous appointment; b) merging the cells required removing the incumbency shading from the first column, which makes the incumbency a little less prominent. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:44, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Put a centered en dash in spaces that don't have images
    Done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:50, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • How come every person has their last name bolded?
    Because the surname is the most important part of the name, and of the line, so giving it visual prominence helps the reader. In Ireland, the shortened formal way of referring to a minister is as "Minister <Surname>", e.g. "Minister Zappone" for Katherine Zappone; see in Google News.
    (When I did raw HTML in the 1990s, I used to use <strong> for purposes like this instead of <b>, so that the markup was not device-dependent; but I don't know how to do this in wikitext. I hope the CSS handles it smartly.) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:50, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've honestly never seen a featured list or many lists with the last name bolded. I would personally just get rid of this. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 06:14, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's common enough in reference books and newspapers. It feels like a step back to remove it, so I'd like a second opinion on that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:59, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The surnames shouldn't be in bold. No guidelines suggests us to do so and echoing BeatlesLedTV, I haven't seen such thing in any other FL. Yashthepunisher (talk) 18:36, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Unbolded. I still prefer the bolded surnames, and I see no guidance either way on it, but I'll go with the 2 reviewers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:35, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I got for now. Definitely needs some work. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 22:56, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It shouldn't been an issue as long as the links are working. Yashthepunisher (talk) 12:57, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would also wait to see what other editors have to say about it. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 06:14, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • For right now, I'm going to hold off on giving my support or oppose until I see what others editors have to say about the list. BeatlesLedTV (talk) 16:50, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
Resolved comments from Yashthepunisher (talk) 12:05, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from Yashthepunisher
Cite 'news' are mostly used for newspapers and magazines. Yashthepunisher (talk) 18:36, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Template:Cite news#Choosing_between_{{Cite_web}}_and_{{Cite_news}} says "given the same set of valid parameters, their output is exactly the same".
I wondered what would happen if I used {{Cite web}} with the website parameter. Template:Cite web says "website: Title of website; may be wikilinked. Displays in italics". So italicisation seems to be the convention. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:59, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fullstop missing from the alt texts.
    Full stops added[7] --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:15, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove oxford comma in the last sentence of the lead's second para.
    I think the Oxford comma adds clarity there. MOS:OXFORD says "editors may use either convention so long as each article is internally consistent", so I have added[8] an Oxford comma to the one other place it was missing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:28, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • You can place ref 5 at the end of the sentence.
    Done[9], tho it seems to me to be a pity to lose the specificity of having the ref beside the point it supports. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:01, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Its not such a big deal to feel 'pity', just my opinion. You can restore it. Yashthepunisher (talk) 18:36, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yashthepunisher (talk) 12:55, 17 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support this nomination. Yashthepunisher (talk) 12:05, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]

Comments by The Rambling Man[edit]

Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 18:42, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comments quick pass...
  • Six very short paragraphs for the lead is too many, suggest merging down to three at the most.
  • " and its predecessors the ..." some punctuation missing here, maybe a colon or a comma before "the".
  • "a gender-balanced cabinet" how many would that take?
    • 50% obviously, which amounts to 7½ women & 7½ men if the maximum 15 ministers are appointed. I didn't include the number because: a) the sources focus on percentages, and none of them offers an absolute numerical target; b) the cabinet has a max size, not a fixed size. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "imbalance is defended" presumably this should be "has been defended" as it's really just an opinion, right?
  • "The third minister," woman minister, but I understand that would make this mini-paragraph even clunkier, needs revising.
  • Shouldn't ref 14 go at the end of the para, or else what is referencing the remainder of said para?
    • ref 14 sources that particular point. The rest of the para is now supported by the refs given in the example which I appended to the para.[14] --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • What's the strategy for italicising these political terms? Some are, some aren't, I'm unclear on your approach.
    • They are not directly italicised. Irish language terms have been wrapped in {{lang|ga|text}}, one of whose effects is italicisation. These are arguably loanwords; if that view is taken, the {{lang|ga|text}} can be omitted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:05, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Again, similar to lead, Constitution and History sections contain a large number of very small paragraphs. This makes for poor aesthetics and slightly clunky reading.
    • I have expanded the shortest para in the Constitution section[15], and merged 2 short paras in the History section.[16] I also added a little to the "Calls for gender balance:" section.[17], and merged 2 short paras.[18] How does that look now? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:23, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "No women were members of the" wouldn't this read better as "No members of the ... were women"?
    • No, it wouldn't read better to split up the key phrase "No women were members" into "No members of the lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit were women". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:55, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Avoid placing text between two images.
  • "Galligan and Buckley" who are they?
  • "The highest number of women ever in an Irish" -> "The most women ever in ..."?
  • "2018 is the..." avoid starting sentences with a number.
  • " Denotes incumbent minister" needs a symbol as well, per MOS:ACCESS.
    • Incumbency is already noted as text in the "Left office" column, so per WP:COLOR, color is not the only method used to convey important information. I'd be happy to add a symbol if you think the duplication is appropriate; would you like to suggest a symbol? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:22, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • With the markup you've used, I'm not sure the row scopes are working, it's best in any case to use the {{sortname}} template rather than direct table coding here.
  • Where is age on appointment verified or even discussed? Is it any more relevant than what age the male appointments are made?
    • It is calculated from verified dates of birth, and included because it is a factor which may be relevant to analysis of the topic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
  • Similar comment on row scopes in the Number of women ministers in each Cabinet table, I'd use {{hs}} for forcing the sort.
  • This table also needs a key, what is FF, SF etc?
  • You need to link every linkable object every time in a sortable table.
  • Why is text for number of women in bold?

Once these are done I'll try a more in-depth review, kids and colds and ice and snow allowing. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:00, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    • Wow, oppose based on absolutely no willingness to address any concerns. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:23, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Wow. @The Rambling Man: You say absolutely no willingness to address any concerns, but that is blatantly untrue. Shame on you.
        I have just spent the last 2 hours addressing each of your concerns in turn, most recently creating a new set of templates to add a key to a table, and I intend to continue through the list and address every one of them. I saw your comment only when I added the response about that key.
        I think what actually you mean is that I don't agree with many of your concerns ... but since they include a request to use a deprecated template and several factual errors (e.g. staggered images, link every linkable object every time) that is unsurprising.
        I urge you to reconsider your oppose. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:12, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • @The Rambling Man: I have now finished responding individually to every one of your points.
          As you can see, I have made changes in response to of your points. In some other cases I have raised questions or MOS/policy issues, and in some cases where I see no MOS/policy issue I disagree with you.
          I have now spent about 4 hours addressing your concerns. Please will you actually consider what I have written, rather than simply dismissing my responses in toto? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:39, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'll get back to you. I'm having the mother of all bad days, with four out of four of us in the household now struck down by 'flu, I was the last to get it. I apologise if my tone was unduly harsh. We'll work through the remainder in due course. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:34, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. And good luck with flu cures. I swear by the virtues of garlic, ginger and chillies, in industrial quantities. Blast the flu into outer space. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:14, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
To get a bigger sample size, I took the broader term "women politicians", and compared its usage in reliable sources with "female politicians":
"women politicians" "female politicians"
JSTOR 1,129 959
Gscholar ~8,870 ~8,820
Gbooks ~650 ~600
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 Wikipedia:Featured list criteria, rather than against your personal preferences? Thanks. --BrownHairedGirl (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)[reply]
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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:21, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:01, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]

Comments by Mr rnddude[edit]

  • Citations
  • Citation 39 has a harv error that needs rectifying "Harv error: link from CITEREFMcNamaraMooney2000 doesn't point to any citation."
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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.
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:23, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:04, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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
      1. I have tweaked the lede down to 4 paras, by merging para2 with para3[25]
      2. 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? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
  • 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 [26] 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:04, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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[27], or Enda Kenny who said "50:50".[28] 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:17, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:26, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have added a whole para[29] on the period from the 1920s onwards in between the Markievicz and Geoghegan-Quinn paras. How does that look? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:54, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:16, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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[30] 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[31][32]), 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:34, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:10, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
    Thanks, @Mr rnddude
    I have moved Coakely should before Coleman.[33]
    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[34] 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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:40, 6 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:23, 6 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    BrownHairedGirl - 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)[reply]
    BrownHairedGirl - 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)[reply]
    Thanks for being so helpful, @Mr rnddude.
    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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:32, 6 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Bilorv[edit]

Resolved comments from — Bilorv(c)(talk) 11:44, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
* The italics in the Constitution section strike me as unnecessary. I notice that TRM brought this up and as you suggest, I think we should treat them as loanwords.
  • The last sentence of the Constitution section is unsourced.
    @Bilorv: Yes, I didn't find an explicit source for that. However, I think it's self-evident both by observation of each of the 19 careers, and by the trail of explicit sources in the constitution section:
    1. ministers must be members of Dáil or Seanad (source: constitution)
    2. the three senator-ministers listed by O'Toole & Dooney 2009 were men
    3. since none of these women are in the list of senator-ministers, they must have been Teachtaí Dála
    I'd have preferred an explicit source, but I don't think that it's required. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:57, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, I understand now. Seems justifiable as an obvious inference. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 18:00, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the word "only" should be removed from "She was only the second woman minister" due to reasons of tone and editorialising.
    • @Bilorv: Sorry, but I don't think it's any sort of editorial comment. The set of pre-1917 govt ministers is huge, running into at least tens of thousands. A random selection of humans would produce approx a 50:50 distribution by sex ... so it seems to me to be a simple statistical observation to note the fact that Markievicz was only the second instance out of those tens of thousands. That's a long way from the value-judgements conveyed by the words listed in WP:EDITORIAL. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:22, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not disagreeing that this is an extraordinary achievement, but I still think we should let it speak for itself. The source – as far as I can see (which is admittedly only with Google Books) – only cites that she was the second, not that this was a substantial achievement. The fact that there are tens of thousands of pre-1917 government ministers is not part of the source, and this would be synthesis anyway. No-one (I hope) is claiming that politics was/is fair to both sexes, so it's clear that unfortunately there aren't going to be 50% female government ministers pre-1917. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 10:40, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Sorry, @Bilorv, but I am not at all persuaded by that. I still think that "only" is an appropriate emphasis of a statistically significant point.
          I took a look at usage of the phrase "was only the second" in reliable sources, and it is widespread in Gbooks, Gscholar and JSTOR. I find the 980 Gscholar results particularly helpful.
          I hope you don't mind me pointing out that your final sentence (no-one (I hope) is claiming that politics was/is fair to both sexes seems in effect to be taking a (presumably intended) POV stance, by dismissing a statistically significant point because it derives from a long-standing injustice which has been normalised.
          Note that I am not including the word for any POV purpose either way. Just using a common statistical emphasis as in Hooker, A.C. Milner, and Sequeira's observation in the journal Antarctic Science that This was only the second dinosaur to be found in the continent of Antarctica. Somehow, I don't think we'd be having this discusion if the article in question was a list of dinosaurs.
          So I think we will have to agree to disagree on this. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:17, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • I can assure you that I would say exactly the same thing if this was about dinosaurs. I apologise if this is not how you understood my comment, but I meant that while ideally we would have 50% female politicians, it's clear that we don't and never have had and the broader social context (the patriarchy) is the reason we would not model this as a 50:50 coin flip. (And I think this is a huge problem, and the way to solve this is with positive discrimination, changes in education and media etc. but that's another discussion.) I still would prefer the word "only" to be removed but I understand from past interactions on Wikipedia that my interpretation of WP:OR is much more strict than most people's, and I'm not going to oppose over one word, so I'll drop the stick here. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 16:47, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • Thanks, @Bilorv. Yes, we do still disagree — I'm not persuaded that an expected rarity is somehow a less suitable case for using the word "only" — but good to know that it's not a stumbling block.
              In any case, after posting my previous reply, I did some more googling with looser search terms and found two refs to support the word "only": one newspaper, one a book by a historian. I added them to the article,[36] and should have posted a note here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:14, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Two two years later" – Typo.
  • "All cabinets since December 1982 have included at least one woman." – Am I missing a subtle difference between "cabinet" and "government", or is this just an obvious consequence of the previous sentence (in which case, it should be removed)?
  • "Dáil.[35]Harney" – Space missing.
  • "However it, amounts to only 27% of the 15 ministers" – The comma is in the wrong place and I think "this" is better than "it".
  • Zappone's caption is not a fact mentioned in the body, and therefore unsourced. Are we taking this as self-evident? Since Harney appears in the list under the "Independent" banner, if only midway through a term, I'd rather it was sourced somewhere.
  • The final paragraph of "Calls for gender balance" mentions the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, giving women the right to stand for election. This information seems like it belongs in the Constitution section.
    • Hmmm. The Constitution section is explicitly about the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, a written constitution, and its provisions on the makeup of the govt. The 1918 Act is UK statute law which applied to Ireland while Ireland was (in UK theory) part of the UK, but it has never been part of the Irish constitution, and was superseded by the Electoral Act 1923 §50. A UK statute law doesn't really fit into into that.
      However, it seems to me that I could usefully broaden the Constitution section into something like "Eligibility", which would have 3 main topics: a) revolutionary era 1918–22; ) Irish Irish Free State 1922–37; c) Ireland (since 1937). I will see what I can come up with. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:29, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Where are the birth dates and "age on appointment"s in the "List of woman ministers" sourced to? Why are there no dates/ages for Heather Humphreys and Josepha Madigan – are there really no sources for this? (This gives Humphreys' birth date as 14 May 1963 but I don't know whether it's reliable. Our own article on Josepha Madigan gives her birth date as 21 May 1970, though it's unsourced.) If there really aren't reliable sources for these women, I would reluctantly accept "?" in the age column but "(d.o.b. unknown)" strikes me as misleading as it's not like this information has been lost.
    1. Birth dates are based on the Oireachtas members database (e.g. Gemma Hussey), verified with McNamara&Mooney for the first 14 minsters who entered the Oireachtas before the book was published. (The Oireachtas members database is v scholarly; in my occasional correspondence with the Oireachtas research staff over the years about anomalies, I have found that they set high standards of multiple sourcing).
      To reduce clutter, I have not referenced these dates, but I now think I should do so.
    2. I have found no reliable sources for birth dates of Heather Humphreys and Josepha Madigan. The Oireachtas database used to publish the d.o.b. of every current member, but has not done so for some members first elected in the 2010s. (Presumably there is a privacy opt-out to avoid identity theft). There is no d.o.b. in its entries for Humphreys[41] and Madigan[42]
    3. I have removed[43] the unsourced d.o.b. from the article Josepha Madigan
    4. The everypolitician.org link you found for Humphreys looks not-reliable. It is vaguely crowd-sourced (see http://docs.everypolitician.org/contribute.html), and cites no sources for its entries.
    5. Dates of appointment are as supplied in the Department of the Taoiseach's History of Government pages, which are referenced in each case.
    6. "Age on appointment" was calculated by me as the difference between those Oireachtas-supplied birth dates and the dates of appointment. AFAICS, date-based calculations are acceptable per the policy WP:CALC and the essay WP:AVRC#Routine_calculations. Should I add a footnote noting how these calculations were done?
    7. I will remove the "(d.o.b. unknown)". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:41, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • The ages on appointment are fine without a footnote, per the policies you cite. The missing dates of birth still irritate me but if this is an omission by the source then there's nothing we can do, assuming you have searched for and failed to find another reliable source with this information. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 14:20, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, the omission annoys me too. I spent a few hours searching back when I was building the list, but while there were plausible dates in various places, none of them are reliable sources. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:49, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • All three footnotes seem to be giving information not found in the rest of the article and therefore require references.
  • "Other women have served outside the cabinet as junior ministers, known until 1978 as Parliamentary Secretaries, and since then as Ministers of State." – This is not mentioned outside the lead and not sourced there.
    • I didn't have the energy to search again for a scholarly overview source, so instead I used a news source for a recent example. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:28, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Criticism of the imbalance is defended by pointing to male dominance of the Oireachtas (parliament) from which ministers are appointed." – I think this belongs under "Calls for gender balance".
    Umm, it is already there , in Calls for gender balance end of para1 / start para2.
    I was just summarising it in the lede. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:57, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Oops. I was just confused by the reference – not something generally used for information repeated later on (not that this is a problem). — Bilorv(c)(talk) 10:40, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the fourth paragraph in the lead should be scrapped entirely. Whether these politicians are still alive as of today is not of long-term importance, or relevance to the history of politics.
    • @Bilorv: I disagree. It seems to me to be extraordinary that in a set of high office-holder spanning 99 years, >80% are still alive. For the set of ministers as a whole, the figure would be about 35%.
      However, I think that it was given too much prominence in the lede. It had been in a section of its own until @Maclean25 rightly noted above that the section was too small. I agreed[50] and moved[51] two small sections to the lede.
      However, in hindsight, I think that was the wrong remedy to the problem which Maclean25 had identified: the all-but-two-still alive point didn't merit its own micro-section, but nor did it deserve the prominence of being in the lede. So I have just moved[52] it to the bottom of the history section. Can you both live with that as a compromise? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:11, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think it's okay now, yes. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 10:40, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • It is fine. While I did pointedly mention it was one line long, my point was more that the section was duplicating the purpose of the lede, which is to summarize the body, and the section did just that without introducing any new information. It is now a fitting, but grim, conclusion to the History section. maclean (talk) 04:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the issues above, the list looks wonderful overall, clearly a lot of work has gone into it, and it is certainly on a deserving topic. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 02:12, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, Bilorv. I'll respond individually to your points. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:17, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: no hurry, but two of my comments are still unaddressed ("Zappone's caption" and "All three footnotes"). Just checking in case you're not aware of this. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 22:15, 27 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, @Bilorv. I should have noted that I am aware of them, and intend to get back to them later this week. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:19, 27 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: any word on this? — Bilorv(c)(talk) 23:21, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, @Bilorv, it's been a bad week and I got distracted. I'll get to it now. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:29, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: all my comments have been satisfactorily addressed. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 11:44, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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! --PresN 20:46, 6 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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