The number of women in the workplace in Ireland has doubled since 1998, that’s according to new data from Ireland’s stats agency.
In 1998, there were 641,800 women registered in employment. That has now increased to 1,310,600, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
That means around half of Ireland’s adult female population of 2.72 million are in jobs.
But the high earners are still overwhelmingly men.
Three-quarters of Ireland’s top 1 percent earners are men, 26 percent are women, says the CSO.
That’s up from 21 percent back in 2018, so the numbers appear to be very slowly equalising. But there is clearly a long way to go.
Across Europe, the picture is varied.
Ireland’s 10 percent employment gap between men and women is close to the EU average. Finland has almost no gender gap at all. In Lithuania there are just 1.5 percent more men than women in the workplace.
At the other end of the scale, the gap between men and women is close to 20 percent in Italy, Greece and Romania, double the gap in Ireland.
But women are often paid less. And that’s a perpetual problem for most of Europe.
According to the EU’s data agency, Eurostat, Ireland’s pay gap is around 15 percent. In there Netherlands, men are paid, on average, a shocking 25 percent more than women.
“There is no reason why a woman should be paid less than a man”, said the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen
“We know that societies where women and men are treated equally are better, fairer and more successful. So let us tap into the vast reservoir of talents and skills of everyone, men and women alike.”
The European Commission has now launched a new ‘roadmap’ to try and close the gap.
“Gender employment gaps vary greatly across countries and regions in the EU. As part of its commitment to promoting inclusive employment, the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan has set a goal to reach an overall increase in employment in the EU to 78 percent by 2030 including by striving to at least halve the gender employment gap compared to 2019.”
It is amongst the raft of new objectives set out by the European Commission.
“Employment and pay gaps are narrowing only slowly in the EU, and violence against women, discriminatory norms and stereotypes persist. Women are overrepresented in lower paid positions and under-represented in decision-making roles.”
It is calling on EU governments and the European Parliament to embrace the strategy and help work towards improving the gender balance.
International Women’s Day was marked on Saturday 8 March.