Over the past 25 years the number of women at work has more than doubled, to 488,000. More than 10 women have joined the workforce during this period for every one additional male worker. Women now comprise 36 per cent of the workforce and 38 per cent of trade unionists.

They comprise two-thirds of new recruits to the trade union movement and it is predominantly female groups of workers - such as nurses, Aer Lingus cabin crew and Dunnes Stores staff - who have fought the main industrial battles of the past two years. In spite of this, women's average earnings are still only 80 per cent those of men; in manufacturing they only earn 74 per cent of the average male rate.

There are now two women joining trade unions for every man and without the huge influx of women workers, trade union membership would be shrinking. But women remain grossly under-represented in the leadership of the trade union movement.

Of nearly 60 major unions affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions only one, UNISON, has a woman general secretary. An ICTU survey in 1993 showed women were grossly underrepresented on most union executives.

When a new review is completed later this year significant progress will probably be reported but the ICTU still expects that women will be seriously under-represented.

Congress has introduced a number of initiatives to tackle the problem. It reconstituted its women's committees in 1996. It has established an equality network of full-time officials, who act as equality officers within their unions and monitor developments at EU level.

The Partnership 2000 agreement has specific commitments on equality, including the implementation of the recommendations of the Second Commission on the Status of Women, the introduction of a national minimum wage and development of a National Framework of Childcare to help working parents.

It has also campaigned successfully to stop the imposition of VAT on creches and individual unions have taken important equal-pay claims to the Labour Court and, in the case of the CPSU, the European Court of Justice.