‘Banks treat women shabbily’

THE Irish Bank Officials Association (IBOA) - the finance union, yesterday launched a scathing attack on the banks for their shabby treatment of female bank officials.

Over 70% of bank officials are women, but few make it to the top echelons within Irish banking.

General Secretary Larry Broderick said despite early breakthroughs in the sector, the reality is that women have been given very little real recognition.

At a two day conference called “IBOA - Building For the Future,” Mr Broderick highlighted that 30 years since the bar on married women working was lifted, women workers are still predominantly in low paid grades.

After the marriage bar was lifted in 1973, the IBOA negotiated three months maternity leave with full pay granted then only to “married ladies.”

Back then, only a small proportion of women made it to management grades in Irish banks, and women were clustered on lower scales, and in the lower grades.

Until the early 1970s there were separate scales for “bank officials” and “lady officials.”

“Today over 70% of Bank Officials are women. Yet women are still clustered at the lower paid grades, and very few make it to the higher echelons in Irish Banks, said Mr Broderick.

Mr Broderick called on Irish Banks to undertake a “Gender Equality Audit,” which would establish the precise position of women in Irish banks, and identify measures which would achieve gender equality.