Women are still under-represented in top jobs and the State's major decision-making structures, new figures revealed today show.
The Central Statistics Office gender report - Women and Men in Ireland 2006- finds just 20 per cent of the members of regional and local authorities are women, that women account for just 34 per cent of membership of State boards and that just 14 per cent of the TDs in the Dáil are female.
CSO report
However, nearly 60 per cent of women were in employment in Ireland this year compared with just over 43 per cent a decade ago. The employment rate for women in the second quarter of the year was 59 per cent, putting Ireland close to the EU 2010 target of 60 per cent.
The employment rate for men was over 77 per cent, well above the average EU rate of around 71 per cent.
The difficulties for women of returning to work when they have young children are also highlighted in the figures.
In 2006, the employment rate for women aged 20 to 44 was 64.6 per cent, the report states. However, this rate varies from 88.3 per cent for women with no children to 53.5 per cent for women whose youngest child was aged between four and five years of age.
According to the CSO report, the education and health sectors employed the highest proportion of women, with close to an 80 per cent share of the total at work in these sectors.
"However, women were not well represented at senior level positions. In the health service, women represented almost 80 per cent of all staff but less than 30 per cent of medical and dental consultants. Similarly, women accounted for 84 per cent of primary school teachers but only 51 per cent of primary school managers."
In 2006, there were 855,000 women and 1,162,000 men in employment. Of these, 21.8 per cent of women in employment were employed in clerical and secretarial occupations, compared with 5.3 per cent of men.
"Professional occupations were the most gender balanced with women representing 49.3 per cent of persons employed in these occupations. Craft and related occupations were the least gender balanced with men representing 95.9 per cent of workers in these occupations," the report states.
It also finds little change in the gender profile of the occupational groups between 2001 and 2006.
"In both years, women accounted for three-quarters of workers in the clerical and secretarial group, but only around 5 per cent of those in the craft and related occupations. The only occupation where the proportion of women decreased over the period was plant and machine operatives, falling from 23.6 per cent in 2001 to 15.9 per cent in 2006.
"The proportion of women increased slightly in other occupations, the highest increases being among managers and administrators, professionals, and those employed in personal and protective services."
The study also reveals women's income in 2004 was around two-thirds of men's income. After adjustments for differences in hours worked, women's hourly earnings were around 86 per cent of men's.
The proportion of men at risk of poverty in 2005, after pensions and social welfare payments are taken into account, was 17.9 per cent compared to 19.9 per cent of women.
So-called 'at risk of poverty' rates were considerably lower for employed men and women at 6.6 per cent and 5.4 per cent respectively, the report states.
In other findings, the early school leavers rate among women aged 18 to 24 was 9.3 per cent, much lower than the male rate of 14.5 per cent.
The report says there were higher proportions of girls taking English and European languages at Leaving Certificate higher level in 2005.
"However, boys had higher rates of participation in technical subjects. Around 95 per cent of Leaving Certificate students taking higher level engineering, construction studies and technical drawing examinations were male. The pattern continued at third level with men accounting for around 80 per cent of graduates in engineering, manufacturing and construction."
The Green Party said the low number of women in Irish politics was "a national scandal".
Its spokeswoman on women's affairs Bronwen Maher said: "Until at least 40 per cent of our TDs are women, issues that affect women such as childcare, support for carers and improved services for families suffering from domestic violence will not be top of the policy agenda."
The Greens suggested a number of measures to increase women's participation in politics, including devolution of power to local government, a cap on spending by political parties and an end to corporate donations to ensure a "level playing pitch".
Political parties must also make commitments to achieve gender balance and to champion women's participation, the party said.