The GAP between men's and women's pay has narrowed from 20 to about 15 per cent in 10 years, according to an ESRI report published yesterday.
"Legislation outlawing discrimination has had an impact," said Prof Tim Callan, who edited How Equal? Men and Women in the Irish Labour Market. "The pay gap that remains has less to do with direct labour market discrimination and more to do with the fact that women spend less time than men in the workplace, and more in caring for family members."
A previous ESRI survey found that in 1987 women's wages were about 80 per cent of those of men. By 1997, this had risen to about 85 per cent. The gap is greater in manufacturing industry, where it is 28 per cent. However, only 20 per cent of women in employment are in the manufacturing sector.
About one per cent of the overall gap was accounted for by inequalities in fringe benefits. The research found that over half of men are likely to have a pension with their job, compared with just over a third of women.
Men were twice as likely to have a health insurance provision in their jobs (16.2 per cent) as were women (7.2 per cent). They were also more likely to benefit from sport and leisure facilities (11.5 per cent compared with 7.3 per cent).
Female workers are more likely to benefit from childcare facilities (0.4 per cent compared with 0.2 per cent of men), but the overall figure was so tiny as to have little significance.
According to the report, the continuing wage gap is partly because wages tend to rise with age and labour market experience. On average a woman has worked for 12 years in the paid labour market, as against 18 years for a man.
This figure is greater if the worker involved has children. "For a typical man and woman, identical in terms of educational qualification, it is found that the arrival of one child when aged 26 and another when aged 29 will lead, by the time the second child is 18, to the woman having nine years less labour market participation than the man."
After the publication of the report the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, said there was a continued need for a focus on equality of opportunity. His Department had provided funding to the Equality Authority to carry out gender audits in conjunction with employers, trade unions and employees.
The report was welcomed by the employers' organisation, IBEC, which said employers would make greater efforts in future to facilitate women to combine work and family responsibilities.
Both the Minister and IBEC drew attention to the report's finding that girls were still participating much less than boys in technical and science subjects at school.
If women are likely to have shorter job tenure, and if there are additional costs associated with the employment of women, such as maternity leave, there is an economic incentive for employers to discriminate against them in both recruitment and promotion. This means statistical methods of monitoring or enforcement are required, the report states.
These would include more statistical information at national level; more data on employment to be gathered in certain sectors, such as the public service; equality audits in individual firms; and the monitoring of cases investigated by the Office of Equality Investigations to track trends and problem areas.
