Gender pay gaps could widen, Siptu forum told

Some women and migrant workers were seen as "sources of cheap and pliable labour" and were taking the brunt of relentless pursuit…

Some women and migrant workers were seen as "sources of cheap and pliable labour" and were taking the brunt of relentless pursuit of profits by unscrupulous business interests, a trade union leader said yesterday.

Both sectors were particularly open to being exploited and gender pay gaps could well widen, Siptu general secretary Joe O'Flynn warned .

Women in the services industry, including carers, hotel and domestic workers and agricultural workers, were vulnerable to being pushed out of their jobs by those willing to accept lesser pay and conditions.

"If women are seen as a source of cheap labour and a vehicle for increased profit margins by the most exploitative elements in the business community, imagine how they regard the advent of thousands of vulnerable migrants from the new accession states and non-EU countries," Mr O'Flynn said at the opening of Siptu's National Women's Forum in Killarney last night.

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Some 30 years after the first equality legislation was introduced, there was still a 15 per cent gender-based pay gap in Ireland, he said. "The danger today is that this may well widen. We have seen the warning signs - the appalling conditions in which migrant women are being forced to work."

Former Supreme Court judge Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness told the 300 delegates that age discrimination in the workplace in a world which idealised youth needed to be tackled.

Discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of age was outlawed under the Employment Equality Acts but in 2005 some 12.5 per cent of cases before the Equality Authority dealt with such discrimination.

At the heart of many of the cases was ageism and stereotyping where a person's individuality was disregarded. Older people were regarded as lacking creativity, likely to be rigid, confused, and frail, she added.

This was not solely a gender issue, and "the Botox generation was gender neutral," she said.

"Some of our views of older people result from our present emphasis on youth culture: the media constantly celebrate youth, a certain kind of physical beauty and sexuality, while mature or older adults are primarily ignored or portrayed negatively," she said. The ideal was early youth and generally skeletal thinness.

"Consider the growth in cosmetic surgery, or the constant use of airbrushing in publicity photos."