More than twice as many women working part-time than men, CSO says

The data suggests that many women are choosing to work part-time having started a family, with men remaining full-time at work while following the same life-path. Picture: Pexels

Women in Ireland are more than twice as likely to be working in part-time employment than men, according to new statistics.

A release themed on the landscape of men and women in Ireland in 2026 by the Central Statistics Office notes that of the women working in Ireland, 29% were working part-time, as opposed to 13% of men.

That figure represents a definite trend given that the levels of unemployment of both genders was roughly equal — standing at 4.4% for men and 4.3% for women.

The data suggests that many women are choosing to work part-time having started a family, with men remaining full-time at work while following the same life-path.

The new release by the CSO is the latest from its Women and Men Hub, first established in March 2024 to provide “a comprehensive one-stop-shop for equality data related to women and men in Ireland”.

Those releases are broken down into six data themes: gender equality, work, education, health, safety and security, and transport.

The latest release offers a number of other disparate data points for how men and women are experiencing life in Ireland at present, noting that for the Six Nations rugby tournaments in 2025 for male and female genders the average viewership per match of the men’s variant was more than eight times that of the women’s sport.

The release contrasted that trend with the televised basketball cup finals in 2025, where the women’s game outperformed the men’s with an audience of 33,700 against one of 22,700 for the men’s game.

Different life experiences

It notes that in terms of education, women continue to outperform, with more than half of all women aged between 15 and 64 having earned a third-level qualification as of June 2024, versus 44% of men. 

Women were a deal more likely also to have earned a postgraduate qualification with 218,551 having done so compared with 160,865 men, as of 2022.

Separately, as of November 2025, 27% of Government ministers in Ireland were women, while women accounted for 43% of Ireland’s elected members of the European Parliament.

In terms of life expectancy, the data shows Ireland as ranking eighth for men and 12 th for women across Europe in 2023. In the same year, the average age of first-time mothers in Ireland was 31.6 years versus the EU average of 29.8 years.

Addressing the latest release, statistician in the CSO’s statistical systems information unit, Laura Delaney, said the data shows differences “in career choices, patterns of work, and earnings”.

“The hub also paints a picture of the different life experiences of men and women, across themes such as education, health, sport, and safety,” she said.

Gender pay gap

With regard to income, the hub noted that Ireland’s gender pay gap — that is the average difference in remuneration of men and women — was 9.3% in 2022 versus 12.2% for the EU.

In 2024 meanwhile, men accounted for 69.4% of those in the top 10% best-paid positions in the country, contrasted with the 30.6% held by women.

With regard to living with disabilities, the proportion of the population was reasonably level split across the genders, with 22.2% of women living in such a situation versus 20.9% of men, the CSO said.