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FASHION DESIGNER AND entrepreneur Sonya Lennon founded Dress for Success in 2011, with the goal of supporting women in the workforce.
The charity aimed to help women achieve economic independence and sustainable employment by giving them the clothing and coaching to succeed in job interviews.
In the years following its foundation, however, Lennon and the charity’s workers and volunteers realised that there was only so much they could do to help individual women.
“We realised… that we could help the individual woman to succeed by giving her the tools available to us, but that in itself wasn’t the answer to the problem,” Lennon told The Journal.
“Because as much as we could help the individual woman, there were systemic issues that were impeding her progressing to her full potential in the workplace.”
Dress for Success – which recently changed its name to Work Equal – began to look into the cultural and social barriers preventing women from succeeding in the workplace. In 2018, it brought together a large number of stakeholders – including business leaders, unions, charities and politicians – for a conference.
Emerging out of this conference, a number of key areas were identified that could impact women’s equal status in the workforce and bring about positive change. These include redesigning childcare in the country, addressing societal norms which place a higher value on men’s work, and bringing in new laws to address the gender pay gap in Ireland.
The gender pay gap
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly wages of men and women across the entire workforce, regardless of seniority. It is seen as a marker of the participation of women in senior roles (which are higher paid) in an individual company, sector, or in the country as a whole.
A survey carried out by Work Equal last year found that three quarters of people believed that closing the gap is important and should be a priority for government and employers.
However, there remains some mixed messages over what measures should be taken to achieve this, and what the gap actually is.
“I think there’s a lot of confusion, and that’s borne out in the research. A lot of people make reference to equal pay, and that’s been enshrined in legislation since the mid-70s,” said Lennon.
“That’s not to say that equal pay is not still an issue in some businesses and sectors, but this is really about opening up the pyramid of your organisation or sector and seeing where the predominance of men and women sit at all quartiles, and where is the earning power?”
In Ireland, Eurostat data show that the gender pay gap has fluctuated over the past decade. It rose from 12.7% in 2011 to a high of 14.4% in 2017, before dropping to 11.3% in 2019, the final year that figures are available.
The situation across the EU
Ireland’s gender pay gap is lower than the EU average of 14.1%. Luxembourg has the least difference in pay between men and women at 1.3%, while Estonia has the widest gap at 21.7%.
At the end of last year, MEPs voted overwhelmingly to call EU member states to take practical measures to ensure that women have equal access to the labour market and employment, and that they have equal pay and equal labour rights.
As well as this, earlier last year the European Commission proposed new measures to increase pay transparency in companies. The measures include requiring large companies to report on the gender pay gap in their organisations.
Following this, the European Council agreed a common position on the measures, and they are now due to be debated in the European Parliament.
Closing the gap
The current government has said it is committed to ensuring men and women are equally represented in the workforce.
The 2020 Programme for Government contains a commitment to introduce new transparency laws similar to those proposed by the European Commission. The laws will require large companies to publish information on the gender pay gap in their organisations.
This law – known as the Gender Pay Gap Information Act – was passing through the Oireachtas during the term of the last government, but lapsed when an election was announced in 2020. It was restored by the current government and signed into law in July of last year.
The specific guidelines around how the law will operate have yet to be published, but it is expected to come into force later this year. Once this happens, companies with more than 250 employees will be required to publicly publish information on the gap between the earnings of men and women in their organisations.
In two years, this will apply to companies with over 150 employees, and in three years it will apply to companies with over 50 employees.
Consultancy firms have warned employers to begin ahead of time addressing disparities in pay between men and women, as they risk reputational damage once the gap becomes public.
Speaking last year when the law passed through the Oireachtas, Equality Minister Roderic O’Gorman said that “pay transparency is one step closer”.
“Reporting of the gender pay gap by employers will provide accountability and transparency, helping to ensure that employers address the gender pay disparity between men and women,” he said.
Case study
One company that has managed to close the gender pay gap ahead of time is An Post, which announced last year that women in the company now earn slightly more than men on average.
The company launched a Gender Pay Gap Report in 2019, and from there worked to narrow the gap from 3.7% to 0% last year.
Speaking to The Journal, Chief People Officer with An Post, Eleanor Nash, explained how the company managed to fully close the gap:
“Firstly, we brought in software to remove gender bias from all our role profiles. So every time we advertised a role we ran it through the software just to remove any gender bias,” said Nash.
“And for all our management roles we set a target to have gender balanced shortlists for interviewing. So the best person for the job, but we had a gender balance at the shortlisting stage.”
An Post also promoted its flexible working initiatives and aimed to build confidence in women who may want to progress in the company.
“What we find a lot for women is confidence, and how do you build that confidence with them? We had master classes from our management board. People at senior level sharing their own experience of moving up the ladder.”
The company also started a female candidate acceleration programme and worked to support women in creating networks across the company.
An Post has over 10,000 full-time employees, with the majority being postal operatives working out of Delivery Service Units (DSUs) across the country. Currently, just 13% of postal operatives are women, and Nash says An Post will work to address this and increase female representation at all levels of the company.
A symptom, not a cause
Sonya Lennon of Work Equal welcomed the introduction of the Gender Pay Gap Information Act last year, but says that far more needs to be done to ensure equality for women in the workplace.
“We’re extremely mindful that the gender pay gap is a symptom, not a cause. So we really need to start tackling the causes of the pay gap,” she said.
“Obviously bringing awareness and highlighting inequities cross sectorally is going to be very valuable and help us to move towards positive change, but looking at the other aspects around caring duties and childcare, around societal norms, they’re real issues that still need to be addressed.”
Work Equal is now focusing its lobbying efforts on reimagining childcare in Ireland
“Until men and women share caring duties, that idea of an equitable society is always going to be kind of elusive,” said Lennon.
“There are fundamental societal issues that are really glacial in terms of creating change, but we need to look at what an action plan to address these could be.”
This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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“Social welfare recipients will receive a 25% bump in their holiday week payment in the form of the Christmas Bonus.”
What about people who get up off their ar*e and work, any chance of a 25% tax break at Christmas for us!!
Or the people like myself, fked off it after 6months at 35 having never been unemployed in my life. While people i know are lifers who have never worked a day in their lives
Gerry do not be too jealous it is an extra €47 Euro at Christmas
€47 for free!!!!!!!!!
64 billion of free money taken out of the country, hammers those on social welfare!
Always the working class to suffer!
as a full time carer who has been severely hit over the last 7 years I welcome this! Some of us don’t have a choice, I wish I COULD get of my arse and work instead of running to endless hospital appointments, meetings, sleeping o the floors of hospitals, physio appointments, seating clinics etc! Not always black n white! Wanna swap?
I will pay thousands more to fund social welfare and farmers thanks to new 7% USC. I’m sick to the back teeth of bank rolling everyone else .
No disrespect to you but as you said and I quote “if I could get off my arse I would” I don’t go to work and come home and sit on my arse so practically it wouldn’t be possible to swap our roles. Just because I work doesn’t mean it’s plain sailing I work every hour I can 40/50/60 hours a week and still do everything else I’ve to do. I try juggle appointments but there’s just not enough hours in the day to do everything that has to be done! So yes it is the working class that suffer
Tina I don’t think the comments are meant for people like yourself, it’s just a case of a lot of people in this country won’t work. I myself lost my job three years ago and I had to start another job getting paid half what I was on. But I’m doing it and not getting much more than the dole. I’d love €47 extra at Xmas in fact people collecting social welfare that week will be paid more than me.
I’m a carer too and it’s hard not to take these comments personally. I care for two people but don’t claim any payment for looking after the second person as its my dad and I don’t want him to think he s a burden. So almost every single minute of my life is claimed by someone else. I never get more than four hours sleep and the only down time I get is sitting waiting at appointments .its not a life I choose . I had to give up my job to do this. Work was so much easier and yes I still had all this stuff to come home to but I didn’t have any money worries and my brain was engaged in ways I loved for 8 hours every day. I did nt want to give that up or give up my friends or going out at night or buying clothes or make up or having no one to take my charges so I could to my iwn appointments at the breast clinic . Opting for day surgery because I simply couldn’t stay overnight with no one to look after my loved ones. That’s the life I lead. It’s often lonely it’s pretty broke all the time and worry is my constant companion . 47 euro a week is welcome and needed .
Pensioners worked forty and fifty years full time and paid in. Disabled have paid until accidents or were born with differences and would choose to be whole and able if it was possible, you know this.
So if you earn betwenn €16,016 and €32,800 you get an extra €1.54 per week?
Whoop-dee-fcuking-doo!
Oh, wait. I didn’t see the increase in the bands to 12k and over minimum wage. I’m guessing that won’t make much of a difference though
If you were losing €1.54 a week you’d be cribbing. you just cant win
I get an extra €3.63 per week on a salary of €31.5k
I’ll be celebrating with an extra 2 cans of Dutch next Friday :)
(or maybe one on Friday and one on Saturday)
Oh Yes Sean a dho…Sean a haon you should be grateful for the crumbs
When he says that the USC Charge is for those earning over 12,000 does that mean that I don’t pay it until I pass that mark or am I doomed from the first euro I earn in a year?
If you earn 1199 you pay nothing. If you earn 1200 you pay 2% of 1200.
That’s how it worked before so I’m guessing it’s the same.
*1.5% of 1200
plus another 5 per month for each kid if you have them? And think there was a 100 tax allowance for water charges?
It’ll be at least 9 months til I can claim that extra fiver.
If anyone wants to go halfs on a nipper just PM me.
€3.63 a week is €188.76 a year… That’s pretty similar to another figure that the average person has recently been told they will be getting charged annually for a certain transparent fluid…
There is another article on the journal which states single people 35k per year will get 8 euro per week.. So 416 less tax per year. What percentage reduction against last year would that be?
Pedro I think the colour of that fluid varies greatly depending on what part of the country you live in.
The only transparent thing where I live is the lies told by politicians, the crap that comes out of my tap sure isn’t transparent!!!
I thought the USC was an emergency measure for the duration of the Economic and Financial crisis……It is like PRSI which was allegedly intorduced as an Insurance scheme that we paid for Welfare benefits, Pensions and medical insurance should we need them….It then became just another Tax
I thought you continued to maintain Ireland remains in a precarious economic position? Are you now saying the crisis is over and the USC is no longer needed? Which is it?
I think the “Income levy” was floated as a temp tax. They then let that expire and introduced this new USC to replace it. Haven’t heard any mention of it being a temp measure.
I didn’t know they hit roll your own tobacco tax.miserable effers.
so if i understand this right this budget encoruage people to stay at home unemployed because thats the only way to get house benefits,cut water charges,christmas bonus,allowances living the life etc…and people who work everyday have to pay the full of every bills. maybe get like 1 or 2 euro extra per week. so its looks like everybody better off on social welfare then.
The one and only main thing that we need to know from this budget is that in reality it is going to make very little positive difference to anyone.
married couple earning 50k each will come out with an extra 200 per month from the income tax/USC changes alone. Add in child benefit, plus 100 tax credit for water and they should be pretty happy I would think.
how could someone earning up to 60k be entitled to a medical card??? if i got it right
many are, paudi.. something like 40% of the population have medical cards.
So sign up for irish water and we’ll give ye a few bob. That few bob comes back to us anyway. If you sign up for it, you deserve everything coming ypur way
Just move out of Ireland. Ireland is not a place for newly married people, hoping to have a successful career, family and a home (paid for by my good self, not the government) and being robbed through countless “flaithuil” taxation. Good Luck fellow Irish!
Whatever hope about being married… Try be successful and single. You miss out on the extra tax allowances for being married.. Plus, the 70k usc entry point is per person, so a married couple on 70k each get 140k per year and still only pay 7%
Water charges will cost more than all of these small gains, up yours fg… Good luck with that election, again top earners benefit most
How are top earners benefiting most? The burden of USC is being moved further up the income chain.
How do top earners benefit most? Additional USC rates for those earning >70k and 100k. Although if I was earning it I could probably afford it!!!
I am in the top earning bracket and I net out at zero gain/loss for this budget I as far as I can tell – am not complaining about that.
I think if you were a little better at maths, you may be a top earner yourself someday.
Hear, hear. If tax goes up by 1% then higher earners get screwed more and if tax goes down 1% higher earners benefit more.
Jeez it doesn’t need a degree in economics!
Sounds like the default knee-jerk reaction from the Socialists – “honest, working class hit again …. the devious, fat-cat rich upper-class Toffs will benefit significantly from this budget … When we get into power there will be a 100% toff-tax on the filthy rich earning over €100K a year”. Their eternal sense of persecution, unfairness and hand-out entitlement for doing just about nothing must get tiring after years of that Carry-on?
.. And the house charges, and the continuous prescription rises plus meds off prescriptions every week. Electricity, coal and gas cylinder prices have had huge increases, plus food and buses stopped altogether. Allowances and basic monies cuts. No, not easy street at all.
I’m dizzy with excitement
A little from column A, a little from column B….
I swear we’ve turned into a nation of tedious accountants and economists at this stage. The Land of Statements and USC’s…
So you wouldn’t want the national budget to be done by tedious acountants & economists?
I look forward to the opposition response to the budget and what they’ll be most enraged about.
Working overtime tonight john? Must be great pay
ah now the truth John does it for the love of Enda
The response has thus far been embarrassing. Fianna Fáil scoring a political own goal by pretending to be concerned about give-away budgets, and Sinn Féin upset at the idea the middle-income workers who bore the brunt of the cuts should be first in line for any relief. I expect them to keep hammering the water charges line.
Biggest load of balls!
Pension levy rip-off gone. Yippee!!!!
Will be very happy to see the back of that horrible levy, so that is worth welcoming for those who have to invest in private pensions.
Wow. I think its the most irresponsible budget, probably ever. AJ Chopar’s findings and recommendations out the windows. I hope we dig bigger holes for all the junk that will be bought with the ridiculous reintroduction of the Xmas bonus, and end up as landfill.
And they still think we’re gonna pay water charges
Those of us who believe in social democracy will, yes.
Those of us who believe that you can pick and choose when you pay your taxes might not be, no.
Did anybody explain to you that we already pay for the services of water?? Why the hell should we allow the privatisation of our water?? So you can go and talk about democracy all you like. It’s our democratic right to refuse to be ripped off AGAIN!!
Why don’t people who’ve been on water schemes for ages also get tax relief
Divide and conquer!!!!!!
Sooooo I go to work all year where I don’t get a Christmas bonus to help pay towards people who don’t work get a Christmas bonus???? What’s the point:(
No point, none at all,sit at home scratch your whole, pop out a sprog or 6 preferably with gobby git syndrome or rickets or something, try and have them by atleast 2 different dads,extra points but sadly no extra no money, oh no wait,hang on. I’m sure there’s an extra bob or two in it if u claim it’s something to do with you culture!Then you can sit bk n pay €20 a week rent because of corse you live alone and everything else is pretty much handed to you. Well done.
Very disappointed with the budget no move to assist low paid ps who took very unfair cuts and are suffering particularly those with young families. First to be cut last to be supported. Shame on this government reduce tax for some totally unaffected and leave low paid suffering.
Anyone know if disability allowance is changed and if the price of medication has changed.
Thanks.
Neither rate has been changed.
But maybe you’ll the extra 25% Christmas bonus. Not sure on that.
Thanks Michael. That question wasn’t for me. Glad you answered.
Glad to say that the Christmas bonus does apply. Small mercies.
Best of luck!
I’m a pensioner on state contributory pension and a well from which I get my water how much have I got?
Rand – if living alone you may qualify for the extra €9 per week on the living alone allowance so up 468 per year there.
Plus, possibly the household benefits package €100 payment towards water costs.
Plus, the social welfare 25% bump at Christmas may be applied to pensions – not sure yet on that – 47 euro?
The USC level and rate changes might just about affect you to the tune of 200 per year better off.
Don’t know enough about your personal circumstances to be able to say but looks like the bones of 900 euro per year.
we’ll give you €9 a week if you give us your well! deal?
Whatever they have introduced.whether I was prsi, usc.etc etc.there here to stay we are never getting rid of.
.5% is an insult, scrap it
Does the reduction in the pension levy include public sector pensions or does it only apply to private pensions?
Only Private. The Public one should be called a small contribution towards a gold plated retirement fund.
Haha, you’re hilarious. As a low to middle income earner I pay about 140 euro a month to my – non voluntary – pension. Multiply that by 52 and again by 40 and you’ll get a very rough idea that I’ll have paid a few quid in myself by the end of it
Sorry, obviously I mean multiply by 12
It’s still nowhere near the value of it though…
Anyway… The pension raiding was only done on private pensions so you can’t stop paying something you never started
Margaret, thats €67k you have to pay to be entitled to a reasonable income, potentially for 20 or 30 years. Anyone in the private sector you give a limb to get that kind of return. It’s just not available in the real world, only in Quango Quango land.
Pat, anyone who joined in the last decade who ends up with a €67k fund will get a small lump sum and the contributory old age pension. And that’s it. €230 a week. There’s no gold plating there.
I actually pay a pension levy of 160 quid a month too. The pension levy was on public sector pensions as well as private pensions
Obviously a good job done in regards to the budget today! Very few disagreeing with the new measures
I am a Registered General Nurse with 25 years experience. I can’t get my head around the pension levy. Was there any changes? It costs us a small fortune. Anyone know?
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