Irish women earn 9% less than men

IRISH women are paid an average of 9% less than men for the same work — but they still have better parity than most of Europe.

The figures, from Eurofound’s European Industrial Relations Observatory, found that women earn on average almost 16% less than men doing similar jobs.

The researchers examined figures for Ireland from Eurostat on gross hourly wages for all paid employees aged 16–64 years who work 15 or more hours a week.

They found that average earnings for women were 91% of those of men.

That compared to just 74.6% in Portugal and 73.1% in Slovakia.

Surprisingly Germany and Holland also showed a low level of equality with 78% and 80% respectively.

The figures for Ireland contrast with claims in March that newly graduated women were earning an average of 11% less than their male counterparts.

In the book, Where are We Now? New Feminist Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Ireland, Ursula Barry wrote: “Within the pay system, women continue to experience discrimination across the economy. Even among recent graduates from the third-level system, women’s pay is on average 11% below that of male graduates where the average gender pay gap is 16%.”

At the time of the book’s publication Orla O’Connor, head of policy at the National Women’s Council, said the 11% figure pointed to gender discrimination and sexism at work.

Neil Crowley of the Equality Authority said the Eurofound figures were encouraging in that women were gaining more parity but it was unacceptable that there was any gap at all.

He also said the figures could have been skewed by the fact that more people are earning the minimum wage which is a set level for all.

The greatest parity of earnings was in Slovenia and Belgium where women’s pay was 93% of that of men closely followed by Italy and Ireland both on 91%.

Eurofound said the good news was that the gender pay gap in the EU15, the group of EU countries prior to the addition of Eastern Europe states, is shrinking.

“The bad news, however, is that the pay gap between men and women doing similar jobs in the new EU member states is wider than the EU average,” it said referring to figures which showed the gap between the sexes was 13.7% for the Eurozone and 14.5% for the EU15 and Norway.

“The gender wage gap averaged 15.9% across the EU27 in 2007, as indicated by the annual update on pay increases, which covers all EU27 member states and Norway,” the survey found.

“This is down from the 16.2% recorded in 2006.”

Since 2001 the average wage gap in the EU15 countries has fallen. It stood at 20.4% in 2001, 19.2% in 2002, 18.6% in 2003, 17.4% in 2004 and 18.1% in 2005.

“In the 10 new EU member states, and the newcomers Romania and Bulgaria, the gender wage gap averages 17.8%, which is 3.4 percentage points higher than the average in the EU15,” it said. “In the 2006 pay review, the gap for these new member states was found to be 17.5%, 2.2 points higher than the average in the EU15.”

Eurofound is an official EU body set up to provide information and advice on social policy issues.

Equal pay across Europe

A selection of women’s average earnings as a percentage of men’s average earnings:

* Slovenia — 93.1%

* Belgium — 93%

* Italy — 91%

* Ireland — 91%

* Germany — 78%

* Portugal — 74.6%

* Slovakia 73.1%