The Constitution of Ireland provides that "all citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law. This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function" (Article 40.1).
The first (1970-1973) and second (1990-1996) Commissions on the Status of Women considered steps necessary to ensure the participation of women on equal terms and conditions with men in the political, social, cultural and economic life of the country. Women's empowerment and related issues have been considered by the Convention on the Constitution, the Citizens Assembly and were the focus of the Citizens Assembly on Gender Equality (established 2019). The work of the Citizens Assembly on Gender Equality was then expanded upon by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality, which was established in 2021 to consider the recommendations from the Citizens Assembly. The Committee concluded its work by publishing its final report in December 2022 entitled “Unfinished Democracy, Achieving Gender Equality”.
Ireland's membership since 1973 of the European Economic Community (EEC), now the European Union, was followed by introduction of equal pay legislation in 1977, and in the late 1990s by broader equality legislation on nine discriminatory grounds including gender (the Employment Equality Acts and the Equal Status Acts) along with the establishment of equality bodies and the Irish Human Rights Commission.
In 1985, Ireland acceded to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Priorities set out in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 have also informed a series of national action plans in Ireland for the advancement of women, such as the National Strategy for Women and Girls 2017-2020 (PDF 2.8 MB), and will be progressed in the forthcoming successor Strategy currently under development.
Ireland's equality, gender equality and human rights infrastructure was revised again in recent years with the establishment of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Workplace Relations Commission, while coordination of policy and implementation is now a function of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.
Grant assistance is provided annually by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to National Women’s Organisations, which supports a grant for core expenditure of the National Women’s Council of Ireland. Funding is also provided for positive action for gender equality, which currently supports specified women’s organisations, projects to support women’s return to employment and female entrepreneurship, and initiatives to promote equality for women and girls under the National Strategy for Women and Girls.
The Scheme to Support National Organisations is a key element of the Department of Rural and Community Development support for the role of the community and voluntary sector in contributing to the development of strong and vibrant civil society and in improving outcomes for those most disadvantaged. The programme provides multi-annual funding towards the core costs of national community and voluntary organisations in Ireland that focus on providing supports focusing on social exclusion, addressing poverty or promoting equality. Among the successful recipients of the current scheme, running from 1st July 2022 to the end of 2025, are three organisations whose remit can be immediately identified alongside the specified headings of Goal 5 which are:
Women’s Aid (End Discrimination and Violence)
The National Women’s Council of Ireland (Equality and Empowerment)
SAFE Ireland
There are also recipient organisations working with children and vulnerable persons, whose remit may not be exclusively for women and/or girls alone, but who play a role, whether directly or indirectly, in supporting the aims of Goal 5. Examples are:
Barnardos
Children’s Rights Alliance
The Rape Crisis Network Ireland
Free Legal Advice Centres
On the 13th of October 2020 the CSO published the Equality Data Audit 2020. The Equality Data Audit is a new initiative to bring awareness of the available data related to equality and also to highlight gaps in the data. The European Commission’s Subgroup on Equality Data published their ‘Guidelines on the Collection of Equality Data’ in 2019. The guidelines provide a series of steps and actions to improve the collection and use of equality data. One of these steps includes a data audit, along with a range of institutional, structural and operational activities. The Equality Data Audit involved reaching out to public sector bodies and requesting them to fill out an audit template. The returned audits were then collated and reviewed. Some analysis was then completed, highlighting areas where there is a lack of data collected, such as race and sexual orientation, and also areas where there is a large variety of data available (e.g. age categories). The full results can be found in the report. The Equality Data Audit is planned to be a document that will be periodically updated. The report describes the results and recommendations of the audit with a link to the actual audit in the report (Equality Data Audit July 2020 Audit File (XLS 416KB).
In April 2020, the CSO released the eleventh publication of Women and Men in Ireland 2019.
The progress indicators used in this report were chosen because they help to:
The Gender Equality chapter in the report shows further information on gender balance and representation.
In 2024 the CSO launched the Women and Men in Ireland Hub on its website. The hub has been developed to collate statistics on women and men from CSO and other public sector organisations. The hub is designed to simplify the process of accessing information on women and men from a single, accessible source.
The hub provides a wide range of information, broken down into six main themes of gender equality, work, education, health, safety & security, and transport. You will be able to find information about the differences in pay between men and women, detailed data on areas of study and work and how that differs between women and men, and hours spent caring and volunteering and much more.
Learn about our data and confidentiality safeguards, and the steps we take to produce statistics that can be trusted by all.