About 15 in every 100 employers in Ireland in recent years are women, an international study today shows. This contrasts with countries such as Finland, Australia, Canada and the US where about a third of all businesses are either owned or operated by women.
These findings are included in a report from the International Labour Organisation released today called Breaking Through The Glass Ceiling: Women in Management.
The study shows that women in Ireland held a third of managerial jobs in the legislative, senior official or managerial level in 1999. This is a significant increase on 1995 when 19 per cent of positions in these areas were held by women.
The report notes, however, that its findings on women in managerial roles is complicated due to different definitions of what constitutes a manager.
It shows that Ireland ranked ahead of Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK for women in managerial jobs in 1999. Countries with higher proportions of women in managerial roles than Ireland include central and eastern European states, such as Latvia and Ukraine, and Canada and New Zealand.
In Ireland in 1999, women had a 40 per cent share of the labour market, compared to almost 50 per cent in Latvia, 46 per cent in Canada, 45 per cent in the UK and 50 per cent in Israel.
In nearly half of 41 states, women typically held between 20 and 30 per cent of legislative, senior official and managerial jobs.
The report notes that a 1998 survey by a large multinational computer company showed that women clearly felt the "glass ceiling" barrier to promotion was still in place. As a consequence, many women had started their own companies, with between 35 and 40 per cent of all new businesses owned by women.