EC plan shows how to cut gender pay gap
Monday July 16 2007
A MAJOR plan on how to get rid of the pay gap between men and women is to be unveiled by the European Commission this week.
It is expected to show a pay gap of up to 15pc still exists here between male and female workers.
In Ireland, differences - especially in public services - widen with age, often reflecting interrupted service, and are higher among married employees than singles. Irish women earn, on average, 86.7pc of what men earn for doing the same job. In the UK, British women earn 87.4pc of the men's hourly wage.
The National Women's Council of Ireland this year estimated that at Ireland's present rate of change - with just 13pc of TDs' seats and 19pc of local councillors' posts held by women - it will take another 370 years to achieve equality. Under six per cent of the most senior Irish civil servants are female while the vast majority of the most junior clerical staff, 81pc, are women.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, representing 830,000 workers, this month told members that 30 years after the first attempts at equal pay the gap has only dropped from 25pc to 15pc.
Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir Spidla will outline how the commission believes it can narrow the gap between men and women's gross hourly pay by 2010.
The commission committed itself in March 2006 to a "roadmap" on workplace gender equality as part of its 'Lisbon Agenda'. Mr Spidla's Communication, as commission publications are known, is set to call for research on why women make career choices they do, to identify factors behind unequal pay.
- Bernard Purcell
