Women will continue to be poor if society only focuses on paid work

The size of the pay gap seems to have very little to do with the level of development of the countries involved, writes Victoria White

IT’S NOT often we read pure rubbish on the front page of the Irish Examiner. But I am forced to admit that this is what happened last Saturday. I was skipping through all that boring newsy stuff and about to get tucked into an interview with Kevin Barry when my eyes were arrested by the banner headline over a report by our trusty Europe correspondent, Ann Cahill: ‘Pay gap: women work for two months for free’.

Did you ever hear such nonsense in the whole of your life? Women do not work two months for free. If they have children, in Ireland and in much of the western world, they work at least a decade for free.