The National Women's council wants to see penalties against businesses that don't have female representation on corporate boards.
They want to see a law introduced setting a 40% gender balance quota for women on corporate boards.
They suggested that companies should be given three years to reach the 40% quota target.
Research conducted by the organisation shows women continue to be significantly under-represented in Irish company boardrooms.
Senator Fiona O'Loughlin also said introducing gender quotas for senior positions would lead to many benefits.
"It's good for society, it's good for business, it's good for gender equality, so I think there's absolutely no negatives, in terms of this. Ok there might be a bit of push back in terms of the culture we have," The Senator said.
Senator O'Loughlin went on to say enforcement with a relaxed approach to dealing with the issue won't work.
"There's no option but to have sanctions because looking again at the European context where countries decided to have the softly-softly approach and set targets, that absolutely did not work."
The Senator went on to say she believed this would be supported in Government:
"I think there will be cross-party support, there are a number of commitments in the programme for government to be fair in terms of greater participation from all genders and in terms of diversity."
Senator Fiona O’Loughlin, Chairperson of the Women's Parliamentary caucus points out how gender quotas on corporate boards are good for society, good for business and good for #GenderEquality #BalanceTheOdds #WomenOnBoards pic.twitter.com/fWy2RgqOTp — Womenscouncilireland (@NWCI) June 24, 2021
