Measuring Gender Equality in Ireland
The Central Statistics Office regularly publishes "Women and Men in Ireland" a compendium of key statistics which enable us to map the progress of women in achieving true or de facto gender equality in Ireland.
The following are some of the headline statistics from the most recent publication:
Women in Employment
The employment rate for men in Ireland stood at about 75% over recent years, but in 2009 it plummeted to 67.3%, dropping again to 63.3% in 2011. The EU target rate for women in employment is 60% by 2010, a target that was met by Ireland in 2007 and 2008, but by 2011, the employment rate for women had fallen to 56% showing a gender gap of 7.3 percentage points.
The unemployment rate for men increased dramatically to 15.1% in 2009 and has since increased to 17.5% in 2011. The unemployment rate for women, which also increased sharply in 2009 to 8.1% and has risen over the last two years to 10.4% in 2011.
For the 20-24 age group, about a third of men and just over a fifth of women were unemployed in 2011.
Men worked an average of 39.4 hours a week in 2011 compared with 30.6 for women and married men worked longer hours than married women.
Men were more likely to be in the labour force than women in Ireland in 2011, with just under seven out of ten men aged over 15 at work or unemployed while a little over half of women were in the labour force.
More than half a million women in 2011 were looking after home/family compared with only 9,600 men.
There were 851,300 women and 970,000 men employed in Ireland in 2011.