HEALTH MATTERS: Imagine a work environment in which one-in-10 chief executives were men, where two out of 10 senior managers were male and where fewer than one-in-three middle managers were male.
A man working in such an environment might feel that his distinctive skills and capacities were not being acknowledged and that he had little prospect of advancing his career.
The recent IBEC report Women in Management in Irish Business by senior researcher Ms Anne Coughlan showed that, in a survey of more than 6,000 managers and professionals, only 8 per cent of chief executives, 21 per cent of head of function/senior managers, and 30 per cent of middle managers were female.
While only 28 per cent of working age women were active in the Irish labour market in 1971, more than half of all Irish women of working age are now in the labour force. Between 1971 and 2001, the number of women at work in the Republic grew by 140 per cent, compared to a growth of 27 per cent in the number of men in employment.
Men still outnumber women in the workforce, however, with 73.3 per cent of men employed, compared to 50.1 per cent of women. In 1991, the participation rate for women was 35.6 per cent.
More than three in every four (76.8 per cent) women aged 25 to 34 are in paid employment. Almost as high a percentage (76 per cent) of women aged 20 to 24 are in the workforce, while 64 per cent of women aged 35 to 44 are employed.
The participation rates of women in the 35 to 44 age brackets have doubled in the past 10 years, as have the number of women aged 45 to 55. Almost half of married women (46.4 per cent) were engaged in paid employment in 2001, compared to only 25.7 per cent in 1991.
Women's increased presence in the workplace is attributed to higher educational attainment, lower fertility rates, the removal of the "marriage bar" in the public service, equality legislation and higher earning capacity for women than that to which they could previously aspire.
In 1971, when women represented only 28 per cent of the labour force in the State, around 4 per cent of company directors and managers were women.
The IBEC report notes that in 1999, more than half (57 per cent) of all third-level students were women.
The IBEC survey found that human resources and personnel departments alone have higher proportions of women to men at head of function/senior management level.
At middle-management level, women outnumber men only in two areas, again in HR/personnel and customer services, traditionally female, caring and "people-orientated" sides of business. At junior management level, higher percentages of women than men are found in finance, HR/personnel and customer services.
Women in the manufacturing, sales and distribution sectors hold only two out of 10 heads of function/senior management positions. Women fare better - but still worse than men - in the services sector, where 38 per cent of heads of function posts and senior managers are female.
Chemical/pharmaceutical and metals/engineering companies were found to have an almost equally high level of female heads of function/senior managers as service sector companies.
The report found that the bigger the size of a company, the less likely they were to have female heads of function/senior managers.
It is not a uniquely Irish problem. In the US, women make up 46 per cent of the workforce but command only 5.1 per cent of executive positions, according to a 1999 Fortune 500 companies survey.
The IBEC report presents data indicating that women are poorly represented in the higher echelons of decision-making.
One wonders how men might feel if as few as 4 per cent of secretaries-general in the civil service were men - the actual percentage of female secretaries-general in 1997.
That same year, only 10 per cent of those who enjoyed assistant-secretary rank were women, while a paltry 12 per cent of principal officers were women.
In corporate Ireland, 3 per cent of managing directors in 1998 were women, 15 per cent were heads of function and 21 per cent were senior managers.
In 1996-1997, as many as 97 per cent of professors and associate professors at university medical faculties were male, as were 91 per cent of senior lecturers, according to the report.
Ms Coughlan told The Irish Times that the report aims to raise awareness and propose solutions, such as instigating diversity programmes, examining promotional procedures that favour the "in-crowd" and promoting work-life balance initiatives.
jmarmstrong@irish-times.ie
