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IRISH WOMEN BEGIN to earn less money than men after they have children, a new OECD study has shown.
The pay gap stands at -17 per cent before women have children, but after at least one child moves to 14 per cent.
The OECD also shows that men in Ireland work 344 minutes per day in paid work, 129 minutes in unpaid work, and 473 minutes in total. Women in Ireland work 197 minutes paid work, 296 in unpaid work and 493 minutes in total per day.
The OECD average for men’s work in total is 472 minutes, and for women is 493 minutes.
Closing the Gender Gap
In OECD countries men earn on average 16 per cent more than women in similar full-time jobs, but at the top of the pay scale this rises to 21 per cent, which the OECD said showed “the continued presence of a glass ceiling”.
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said:
Closing the gender gap must be a central part of any strategy to create more sustainable economies and inclusive societies. The world’s population is ageing and this challenge can only be mastered if all the talent available is mobilised.
The figures come from the latest OECD report, Closing the Gender Gap: Act now, which shows that the average pay gap between men and women widens to 22 per cent in families with one or more children. For couples without children, the gap is 7 per cent on average. Overall, the wage penalty for having children is on average 14 per cent.
The OECD says that improving the tax and benefit system for working parents would help tackle this. “After accounting for childcare, more than half (52 per cent) of a family’s second wage is effectively taxed away,” it said. This proportion rises to 65 per cent and above in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, the United States and the United Kingdom.
The report also says that if childcare eats up one wage, there is often little or no financial gain from both parents working or at least working full-time. Part-time work among women is most common in Austria, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK.
Taking into account part-time work, the gender wage gap in take-home pay doubles in many European countries, and triples in Ireland and the Netherlands.
Crisis
During the recent economic crisis, women have suffered less than men in terms of employment and married women have often been able to cushion household earnings by working more, said the OECD. But it said crisis-driven cuts in public sector employment – where women account for just under 60 per cent of the total workforce -will worsen womens’ position in the labour market in coming years.
It also said increasing a father’s individual entitlement to parental leave may increase a father’s share in caring on a longer term basis.
According to the report, the impact of pay inequality is dramatic over a woman’s lifetime. Women over 65 are today more than one and a half times more likely to live in poverty than men in the same age bracket.
The proportion of women-owned businesses is around 30 per cent in OECD countries, and self-employed women also earn 30 to 40 per cent less than their male counterparts. Improving women’s access to business financing is key, said the OECD.
In OECD countries girls outperform boys in many subject in school, and are more likely to stay there until 18 and beyond. But girls are less likely to choose science or technology subjects. The OECD recommends raising awareness of the consequences of educational choices on career and earnings prospects, but also says a shift in perceptions and social norms takes time and needs to take place both at school and at home.
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I think the solution has to include true equality in the workplace. This does not in my opinion include so called “positive discrimination” but equal rights to both parents. This would mean the same right to parental leave. At the moment the mother gets and is expected to take all the parental leave. I think if this was mandatory for both parents it would provide the opportunities for true equality. The parental leave could be staggered to give both parents the best chance to have maximum time with their kids. I think this could be good for society as a whole. As it is most men if they took 6 months off would find their job would not be there after. I know this is the case where I work.
Yes, but I’d suggest most men would not want 6 months off, whereas most women would be very distressed at going back to work quickly and the husband being at home instead
both parents are entitled to 14 weeks parental leave (unpaid)
@5starFily – Men don’t want to lose their competitive edge on rivals, but if it were mandatory then the issue would rebalance itself and that is not a worry. The only person that they may lose out to is someone who is choosing not to have children, and that person has more time to commit to work and so would probably deserve to be paid more.
Also if the woman is not comfortable with having their partner being at home with their child then there is something seriously wrong in that relationship.
I really want to say yada yada yada….But I wont.
The thing is there has alaways been gender inequality ,especially when there is an unwillingness to give up that ‘edge’ from people who do not want children or men who obviously can not have children.
Denis Laffey ”Also if the woman is not comfortable with having their partner being at home with their child then there is something seriously wrong in that relationship”. Likewise if the male partner is unwilling to stay at home with the children to enable the woman regain her edge…… Then if that relationship fails, there are so many issues that will lead to poorer conditions for one if not both partners .
My husband would crack up if he had to take maternity leave….so would I
Having paternity leave would be the way to go, its one option at least. My husband only gets one day off if we have a baby, the rest of the time has to be taken as holidays and we can’t afford unpaid leave. Of course there are men who are not interested in taking time off but it would be nice if the option was there for those who do. It would be a great help to women who are recovering from sections or who are dealing with pnd too.
How do you suggest it’s financed if not unpaid?
Evil rich bastards will pay for it. Didn’t you get the memo?
This just proves what we knew already, that children cause the pay gap and are the reason women aren’t promoted as often.
Heres the condensed version – want to earn as much as men and get promoted – dont have kids
Harsh but true
Exactly , I dont really think its anything to do with gender , if a man took a few months off and left work every time hos kids were sick, and went home early to go to parent teacher meetings and took personal calls from teachers during work , Id say hed be overlooked for promotions and raises too , its the nature of employers looking for a higher production level per man hour
“The pay gap stands at -17 per cent before women have children, but after at least one child moves to 14 per cent.”
So this reads to me that after having children the gap in salaries is smaller than before children (by 3 per cent), while whole article tries to show opposite.
Or is that something wrong with my maths?
??
Before children, the gap is -17 – as in, women earn 17 per cent MORE than men – while afterwards they earn 14 per cent LESS.
Thanks Gavan for clarification, but then that bit wasn’t very clearly worded. Thanks.
Sounds like it balances out quite nicely to me Gavan, if they have kids later in life they’re still up 3%!
So should we take it that the OECD doesn’t care that men are paid less than pre-child women?
Ted – No, it’s not 14 per cent less than what they used to earn, it’s what they earn compared to men.
Put it this way: Before a woman has children, she earns €117 for every €100 that a man earns for the same work.
After she has children, she earns €86 for every €100 a man gets.
Gavan: if you included that example in the article would make it all clear first time :) However I am still surprised then that this report reveals that average woman earns 17 per cent more than man for same job (before children) – I thought that always general issue with employment equality was something quite opposite to that – that men earn more for same work than women.
Also sorry if I’m annoying you now ha, but how is that even possible that woman earning say 500 a week before children, gets say 450 after her return from maternity?
That is quite nonsense if woman returns to the same job she is entitled to same salary.
It probably applies only to a woman who searched for new work / starts completely 1st job only after having a baby. And then this is compared to some random man in same situation and such discrepancy is then observed and calculated.
Ah Gavan stop siding with the women! You’re doing the same work as your pre baby female colleagues who are CLEARLY earning 17% more than you, just ask them! The Greek men would be already out protesting at this!!
Here in ireland we are “lucky” enough to have a decent maternity leave of 26 weeks “paid” with an option of an additional 26 weeks unpaid. On top of this each parent is entitled to 14 weeks unpaid parental leave until the child is 8.
My issue with this is that there is no legal entitlement for the father for any paid leave … Not so much as an hour off to see the baby being born so they usually use any annual leave they have.
This is hardly fair and equal on either side. Fathers are thrown back to work sleep deprived and away from the daily care of their newborn whether they like it or not. Mothers have to take on the primary care role regardless of any other factors (eg financial if she’s earning more before having babies??).
So if you were to employ a man or woman in their thirties, chances are the woman could be off for 6mths to one year at a time per child (not includung parental leave) whereas legally the father is unlikely to take anything other than annual leave.
Fathers lose out on the opportunity to be more involved with their babies and women (whether they are going to have babies or not) lose out on the discrimination factor (you can’t ask if they’re going to have babies in an interview so you may just assume they are likely to!).
Simple answer would be option to split some of maternity leave as they are planning to do in the uk. This wouldn’t cost the state more, just divide the paid aspect of leave between both parents as they see fit.
I find this issue hard to get a full grasp on, or at least to balance all of the constituents. Obviously a glass ceiling and gender-based pay discrepancy are worrying, but if we carefully examine what is involved in this picture then there are possible explanations. For example, as the report highlights, women often are putting in longer time with their families in lieu of all out concentration on career work (which men appear to be devoting more time to). Also men do not take as long in parental leave, and this would mean that they are in a position to further their careers while their female rivals are out of the workforce.
So what can we do about it? I personally don’t think that there is still significant degrees of outright gender discrimination in the workplace in Ireland (based on my relatively limited experience of research and IT workplaces), beyond of course the ingrained societal types of bias. Due to that belief I would not like to see men “punished” by the measures, but I do believe that some “affirmative action” should be taken to redress issues with the system that have been left as a hang-over from less civilised times.
For example, an increase in paternal leave and a decrease in maternal leave would rebalance some of the time that women lose due to family. Another possible action would be mandatory regulated and enforced time-limits on working hours to allow men to leave to spend time at home without them worrying that they are harming their careers (this would have a negative economic impact, but we have to prioritise). How about mandatory on-site creches for businesses (or business parks) over a certain size, subsidised by the tax-payer (maintaining a good birth rate in definitely in Ireland’s general interest)?
By affirmative actions I would like to see penalties introduced to target companies whose executive breakdown was not “balanced”. This swings both ways, with under-representation of men being just as bad as the other way around. The definition of balanced can be defined by a set ratio, or (more fairly) as a ration based upon the ratio of men to women in the relevant area plus an “offset” for the less well represented gender of (50-Y)/2 where Y is the percentage of the less represented gender.
So for example: let’s say IT has a general gender breakdown of 30:70 women:men. The above would say that you must have 30 + (50-30)/2 = 40% women executives. In some other industries (medical?) this would be reversed.
God forbid someone applies reason and rational thought to this, a small bit of logic would easily explain the so called “discrimination”.
I think the real story here is the 17 percent gap, have not heard that before, and would like to have a journalist dig into that figure. How would a feminist justify a 17% gap for doing the same job?…..I would like to hear it, then love to hear the explanation of how that is not hypocritical and cannot be applied both ways.
Also the figure show that men work over 2hrs a day more, is that not your explanation there?
I suspect this distortion has not been removed, and if women worked the same hours they would be paid the same…….
What a bizarre and insulting headline ‘women pay a high price for motherhood’
Becoming a mother must surely be the greatest achievement of a womans life. It certainly was for me when I became a dad
Yet the peer pressure from other women for mothers to be ‘back at the desk’ seems to over-ride the human needs of mother and baby
“the greatest achievement of a woman’s life”….jaysus I’d calm it a bit there Jim!!!! Some of us who choose not to have children “may” be a tad offended by that!! And may a moat respectfully suggest that when any person decides to have a baby then that decision is going to have consequences on their life and on their career….just a thought!
The figure only include those working so shouldn’t be effected by the unemployed construction workers.
The basis for calculating the “gender pay gap” is flawed, and only compares average womens hourly rate as a percentage of average male hourly rate.
It does not take into account overtime, hours worked, contribution to company, worth to company etc….
The report states the average hours worked by women is 30.9hrs per week, and 39.4 for men.
Also 3/4 of all people working over 40+hrs per week are men.
Given these fact how could women really expect to keep up without putting in the hours?
With all this considered how can such a blind comparison hope to represent reality, or inform public opinion about the truth?
Given the implosion in male dominated areas such as construction I’m not surprised that pre-children women make 17% more than men.
But obviously, not for identical work. As has been the argument all along. Now the big question is when will we be hearing from all the usual worthies on equality or will this (as I predict) fizzle out into nothing because the sisters are on the up?
Hi folks – I’ve emailed the report’s author to find out more about the -17 per cent, and will update the story as soon as I have some information.
Here is a CSO report on the gender pay gap in Ireland:
http://www.cso.ie/en/newsandevents/pressreleases/2011pressreleases/womenandmeninireland2010/
Thanks
Aoife
There was an article on this report in The Atlantic yesterday with a very different spin on it http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/the-4-rich-countries-where-women-out-earn-men-with-1-huge-caveat/266343/
I assume there is no great urgency to address the pre-childbirth pay gay that benefits women. Obviously discrimination only matters when it fits in with the politically correct narrative that seems to have taken hold among the governing classes and their remarkable unreflective colleagues in the fourth estate. If women are so massively discriminated against in pay and if it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender, then why hasn’t every workplace had a lawsuit in equal pay?
What can we do about this? Why does something need to be done about it? If women take more time off to have kids, then they end up earning less because they end up being less productive. So what?
Hi sorry to break it to you all , but the pay gap is in the favour of men. Women earn 17% less than men before the have children. Once they have a child the gap between what the women and man earns is reduced to 14%. The women still earns 14% less than a man for the same work. NOT 14% MORE …..
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