Women live longer but earn less than men
Life expectancy for women was 81.6 years in Ireland in 2006, compared with 76.8 years for men. Women’s annual income was around 70% of that earned by men in 2008, though after adjusting for time worked, women’s hourly earnings were around 90% of men’s. These facts are contained in the report Women and Men in Ireland 2010 published by the CSO today. Men have a higher rate of employment, but also a higher rate of unemployment. Women in Ireland have a higher fertility rate than in any other EU country; the fertility rate in Ireland in 2008 was equal to the long-term replacement level. The vast majority of those looking after home/family are women. Women are under-represented relative to men in local and regional authorities and in the Oireachtas. Most workers in the Health and Education sectors are women. Men leave school earlier and women are more highly qualified. More men are emigrating and men are more likely to die young. The prison population is overwhelmingly male and most murder victims are male.
Other highlights of the report include:
Education: The early school leavers rate among women aged 18-24 in 2009 was 8.2%, which was much lower than the male rate of 14.4%. There were higher proportions of girls taking English, Irish, French, Biology, Home economics and Art at higher level in the 2010 Leaving Certificate, while boys had higher rates of participation in technical subjects. Over 89% of Leaving Certificate students taking higher level Design and communication graphics, Construction studies and Engineering were male. This pattern continued at third-level, with men accounting for around 84% of graduates in Engineering, manufacturing and construction and 59% of graduates in Science, while women accounted for 82% of graduates in Health and welfare, 76% in Education, and 66% in Arts and humanities. Women are more likely to have a third-level qualification, with over half (52%) of women aged 25-34 having a third-level qualification compared with 39% of men in this age group (Tables 3.8, 4.1, 4.2 and 4.4).
Employment: The employment rate for men in Ireland stood at about 75% over recent years, but in 2009 it plummeted to 67.3% and dropped again in 2010 to 64.5%. The EU target rate for women in employment is 60% by 2010, a target that was met by Ireland in 2007 and 2008, but not in 2009 or 2010, when the rate had fallen to 56.4%. In 2010 46% of those in employment were women. Men worked an average of 39.4 hours a week in 2010 compared with 30.9 for women (Tables 2.1, 2.7. 2.9 and 2.10).
Unemployment: The unemployment rate for men in Ireland was about 5% in recent years but in 2009 it increased sharply to 15.1% and rose again in 2010 to 16.7%. The unemployment rate for women, which stood at about 4% over the last few years, also increased in 2009 to 8.1% and rose again in 2010 to 9.8%. For the 20-24 age group, 32.9% of men and 18.7% of women were unemployed in 2010 (Tables 2.13 and 2.14).
Decision-making: The report shows that women are under-represented in decision-making structures at both national and regional levels. In 2010, only 14% of TDs in Dáil Éireann were women, while they accounted for just over a third of members of State Boards, less than a fifth of members of local authorities and just over a third of the membership of Vocational Education Committees. The average female representation in national parliaments for EU 27 countries was nearly a quarter in 2010 (Tables 3.14 and 3.15).
Population: The highest fertility rate in the EU in 2008 was in Ireland at 2.1, while the EU average was 1.56. The average age at which women gave birth to their first child rose from 25 years in 1980 to 29 years in 2009. Ireland had 98 men per 100 women in the population in 2010. This masks differences in the age groups: at younger ages, there are more boys than girls (as more boys are born than girls), and at older ages, there are more women than men (as women live longer than men). For the 85+ group, there are 47 men per 100 women in Ireland (Tables 1.1, 3.12 and 3.13).
Migration: The years of high immigration to Ireland were 2005 to 2008. In 2006, immigration peaked at 60,300 for men. A year later, it peaked at 52,100 for women. Since then, immigration has fallen very sharply to about 15,500 for both men and women in 2010. Emigration rose steeply between 2006 and 2010, especially for men, resulting in a net outflow of 25,100 males and 9,400 females in 2010 (Tables 1.3 and 1.4).
Life and death: Life expectancy for women in Ireland was 81.6 years in 2006, nearly 5 years more than the value for men of 76.8 years. Life expectancy for men is 0.7 years greater than the 2007 EU average, while for women it is just over half a year less than the 2007 EU average. Men are more likely to die at a younger age than women, with the difference in risk particularly high in the 15-24 years age group. This reflects higher deaths rates for males due to suicide and motor vehicle accidents (Tables 5.1 to 5.5 and 7.3).
Health: Women were more likely to have a stay in hospital, with 339 hospital discharges per 1,000 women in 2009 compared with 294 discharges per 1,000 men. One sixth of hospital stays by women related to pregnancy and childbirth (Tables 5.7 and 5.10).
Principal Economic Status: Men were more likely to be in the labour force than women in Ireland in 2010, with seven out of ten men aged over 15 at work or unemployed but just over half of women were in the labour force. Over half a million women in 2010 were looking after home/family compared with only 7,500 men (Table 3.1).
Occupations: There were 863,000 women and 996,100 men employed in Ireland in 2010. Just over one fifth of the women were employed in clerical and secretarial occupations, compared with only 6% of the men. Craft and related occupations was the least gender-balanced occupation with men representing 95% of workers in this category. Professional occupations were the most gender balanced, where 51% of those at work were female (Table 2.7).
Economic sectors: The education and health sectors employed the highest proportion of women. In the health sector, 80% of employees are women. In primary education, 83% are women. And in second-level education, 64% are women. Despite this, women are not well represented at senior level positions: only 34% of medical and dental consultants are women, 54% of primary school managers, and 39% of second-level school managers (Tables 4.6, 4.8 and 5.14).
Income: The report shows that women’s income in 2008 was around 70% of men’s income. After adjusting for the longer hours worked by men, women’s hourly earnings were around 90% of men’s (Table 3.3).
Poverty: The proportion of men at risk of poverty in 2009, after pensions and social transfers,was 14%, the same rate as women. At risk of poverty rates were considerably lower for those in employment, at 6% for men and 5% for women (Table 3.6).
Crime: There were 10,865 persons committed to prison under sentence in 2009, of whom 10.7% were women. 45 men and 10 women were victims of murder/manslaughter in 2008 (Tables 6.1 and 6.4).
Editor's note
Women and Men in Ireland, 2010 is available on the CSO web site (www.cso.ie (PDF 1,276KB) )
The report may be purchased from:
The Central Statistics Office, Information Section, Skehard Road, Cork
Government Publications Sales Office, Sun Alliance House, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2
or through any bookseller.
Price: €5
For further information: contact Helen Cahill (01 498 4253) or Adrian Redmond (01 498 4309).
Central Statistics Office
01 February 2011
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