Ireland passes EU target for employment of women

IRELAND HAS met and exceeded an EU target for the employment rate of women, according to the latest findings from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The employment rate for women in Ireland was 60.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2008, exceeding the EU target of 60 per cent.

The employment rate in the same period for men was 75.6 per cent, well above the average 2007 EU rate of 72.5 per cent.

However, the figures do not reflect the economic downturn and the particularly high level of job losses in the latter half of last year.

The CSO’s Women and Men in Ireland 2008 report released yesterday found that women’s income in 2006 was about two-thirds of men’s income. After adjusting for differences in hours worked, women’s hourly earnings were about 86 per cent of men’s.

The report showed that women continued to be under-represented in decision-making structures at national and regional levels last year.

Just over 13 per cent of TDs in Dáil Éireann were women, while women accounted for 47 per cent of seats in the Swedish parliament.

Only Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Malta had lower percentages of women in their national parliaments.

Last year women accounted for 34 per cent of members of State boards; 17 per cent of members of local authorities, and just 15 per cent of members of regional authorities.

The data showed that the education and health sectors employed the highest proportion of women, with females accounting for 80 per cent of the healthcare workforce and 85 per cent of the primary education workforce.

However, women were not well represented at senior level positions. In the health service, women represented only 32 per cent of medical and dental consultants and 51 per cent of primary school managers.

The study found that young men were continuing to leave school earlier than young women. In 2007, the early school-leavers rate among women aged 18-24 was 8.7 per cent, compared with the male rate of 14.2 per cent.

Last year there were higher proportions of girls taking English and European languages at Leaving Cert higher level, while more than 90 per cent of Leaving Cert students taking higher-level engineering, construction studies and technical drawing examinations were male.

The research also found that women were at greater risk of poverty than men. The proportion of men at risk of poverty in 2007, after pensions and social transfers, was 15 per cent, compared to 19 per cent of women.

However, women were still more likely to live longer. Life expectancy for women at birth was 81.6 years in 2006, nearly five years more than that of men.

Men were also more likely to die at a younger age than women, with the difference in risk particularly high in the 15 to 24-year-old age group.

According to the CSO, this reflects a greater tendency for young men to commit suicide and to be victims of motor vehicle crashes.