The "significant and persistent" gender inequality in Irish workplaces, where women are much more likely to have low-paid, insecure jobs, can only be overturned when employers introduce systems to deal with the imbalance, says the head of the Equality Authority.
"That means taking positive action to improve the situation of women," said Niall Crowley, the authority's chief executive officer.
Firms must have a structure to improve the opportunities for women in the workplace, he said.
"It might mean mentoring, target setting, targeted training. There's a panoply of positive actions that can be taken," said Mr Crowley, speaking before his address to the Gender Equality conference at the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham yesterday.
During his speech, he spoke of the need of bringing gender into the mainstream of decision making - that's where the Government "pauses" before making a decision to consider what impact it will have on women. "This requirement should be made explicit in our equality legislation and should be extended to all areas of policy making," he said.
Mr Crowley was speaking after a paper by Equality Authority colleague Carol Baxter, which said the position of women in the workforce here has stalled, and is going backwards in some areas.
One of the reasons why women were not getting ahead in the workforce, she said, was the fact that many women are forced to stay at home because childcare remains expensive and difficult to obtain in Ireland when compared to the rest of Europe.
In 2003, the OECD estimated that the average childcare fee paid in Austria amounted to five per cent of the annual industrial wage, but rose to 20 per cent of the average industrial wage in Ireland, Ms Baxter said.
Ireland's childcare problems are a "legacy of the assumption that women would remain in the home to look after their children on an unpaid basis," she said
Mr Crowley said that childcare remains a problem here. "The State has made significant investment, but it is doing so from such a low starting point that we continue to have major problems."
He also spoke of a "backlash" against equality in Ireland. "Backlash is triggered, in the words of one commentator, 'not by women's achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. It is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finishing line'."
"Backlash is evident when we hear tell of political correctness gone mad, of equality going too far, of social engineering and seeking to make everyone the same. Every new move made for gender equality becomes a focus for such commentary."