Women are the better educated but only earn 73% of men’s incomes

Women are winning the battle of the sexes in the classroom but are still losing out to men on the payroll.

For while they are more likely to complete their education and get a third-level qualification than men, they are also more likely to sacrifice career for family and earn less for the hours they put in at work.

The difference is most striking among those earning more than the average industrial wage. The number of men earning €50,000 or more annually (254,259) is more than double that of women (122,929).

In general women earn less than three quarters (73.1%) of men’s income. Some of that gap is due to more women working part time or reduced hours, as four times more women than men work fewer than 20 hours a week. Three-and-a-half times more men than women work over 40 hours per week.

Even if both groups worked the same number of hours, women would still earn 6% less than men.

The figures are from a CSO analysis of gender differences in 2011 that shows the traditional male-female role split still applies in many households.

More than 500,000 women were at home full time looking after family last year compared with only 9,600 men, a divide that means women make up 98% of full-time homemakers.

That may change in the future as the figures show among the current generation of 20 and 30-somethings, women are more likely to have completed their education and more likely to have a third-level qualification than men.

However, even if more women do enter and stay in the workplace, their career choices would need to change dramatically to even out the gender imbalance in some professions.

Women make up 82% of healthcare workers, 85% of primary school teachers and 63% of secondary school teachers. Men make up 92% of construction workers; 89% of the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries workforce; and 82% of workers in transport and storage.

Women’s numbers are also low in the corridors of power, with men making up 85% of the Dáil and about 65% of State boards.

One area where women are probably glad to be under-represented is in jail. Just one in eight of the 12,487 people committed to prison under sentence was a woman, while men were four times more likely than women to be a victim of murder or manslaughter.

When it comes to looking for work abroad, the numbers are almost even, with just 900 more men than women leaving these shores last year.