Poverty trap - Women in low-pay jobs

THOSE who fought the long-ago battles for women’s equality hardly imagined that huge numbers of their sisters would end up with two jobs — their paid and demanding job and the equally, if not more so, demanding one they face when they go home after a day in the hospital, office, shop or classroom.

Neither did they imagine that their efforts might not end the long-established but unacceptable reality of unequal pay. The Nevin Economic Research Institute, in its Quarterly Economic Observer, pointed out yesterday that almost a third of women in paid work are low paid and, on average, are paid below at least €2 less than the €11.45 low-pay benchmark. The report recorded that 45.6% of low paid women are their household’s main earners and that 34% provide all of their home’s earned income. It is likely that many of these women are forced to accept zero hours contracts as well.

This report testifies to the enduring trap of poverty and the absence of opportunity in too many lives — women or men. It is time this crushing cycle was broken.