Women fill just 21% of State's top business roles

International Women’s Day tends to concentrate the mind of the business community on the issue of female representation, a process that naturally leads us towards a raft of statistics. Inevitably, some of the numbers will be encouraging, some considerably less so.

Today, on the less heartening side, new research from accountancy firm Grant Thornton tells us that just 21 per cent of senior business roles in the Republic are filled by women and, alas, this is worse than the position four years ago.

The figure, which emerges from research across 100 companies, is flat on 2012. It compares to an international average of 24 per cent, which was three percentage points higher than a year ago. Globally, we’re 36th out of 44 countries surveyed – hardly a cause for celebration.

Sinead Donovan, a Grant Thornton partner, suggests that economic weakness may have left little room for career progression, thus allowing for fewer opportunities for women.

Even with the stagnation however, only about a third of Irish companies surveyed said they would support quotas with respect to the boards of plcs. This matched the global result on this question, which is likely to become a hotter topic the longer female participation at higher levels in business in politics remains a talking point.

One crucial point in the research is that the Republic is ranked lowest on flexible working in the EU, aside from Greece. This translates into 53 per cent of companies offering family-friendly working solutions, compared to an EU average of 74 per cent.

Donovan notes that flexible working is not the only determining factor in growing female participation, with more mature economies where it is embedded not necessarily seeing more women in senior roles.

It is however a start along a road that continues to stretch far ahead, since it can allow women with young children to remain in the workforce even though they no longer wish, or find themselves unable, to work full-time hours.

Figures from Eurostat show 26.2 per cent of Irish employed women (across the public and private sectors) with one child work part-time hours, with this rising to 48.3 per cent with three or more children. The comparable figures for men are 7.9 per cent and 7.7 per cent respectively.