In the 30 years since the introduction of the Employment Equality Act the experience of women in the workforce has been something of a mixed bag, a conference in Dublin was told yesterday.
Speaking at a conference on gender equality, Carol Baxter, head of the development section at the Equality Authority, said that on the positive side women were entering a much wider range of jobs than ever before.
She said that the professions were now almost gender-balanced and that over 30 per cent of managers in Ireland were now women.
Ms Baxter also said that an analysis of the 2006 Leaving Cert results by the Higher Education Authority had indicated that female students formed the majority of those securing places on high-points university courses such as law, medicine, science and business.
However, she said that there was still a persistent gender pay gap. She said that the National Employment Survey in 2003 had indicated that the hourly earnings of Irish women were 16 per cent less than those for men.
"The fact that women tend to take a hugely unequal share of caring responsibilities in Ireland and to take more time than men out of the workforce to undertake caring work is often seen as the major reason for the gender pay gap in Ireland.
"However, it is important not to attribute the gender pay gap solely to the impact of caring," she said.
Ms Baxter said that women tended to be viewed differently by their employers and to be paid less than men regardless of whether they had caring responsibilities.
She said a graduate follow-up survey in 2004 had found "a significant gap" in the salaries of those employed in the private sector, with women earning 8.2 per cent less per hour on average than men.
She also said that a higher proportion of men than women had received bonuses from their employers in the previous 12 months and that the value of bonuses received was approximately 25 per cent higher for men.
