Northern Ireland

Women in Ireland more likely to be low paid than in Northern Ireland – report

A narrower gender pay gap in Northern Ireland is partly down to a higher percentage of public sector workers, researchers said.

Professor Helen Russell speaking at the launch of the ESRI and Shared Island Unit’s report on Gender and Labour Market Inclusion on the island of Ireland, at the ESRI in Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin
Gender and Labour Market Inclusion report Professor Helen Russell speaking at the launch of the ESRI and Shared Island Unit’s report on Gender and Labour Market Inclusion on the island of Ireland, at the ESRI in Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin (Niall Carson/PA)
By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA

Women in Ireland are more likely to be low-paid than those in Northern Ireland, according to a report.

The report’s authors suggested that a more narrow gender pay gap in Northern Ireland was because of a higher percentage of public sector workers in the region.

The study looked at pay, education and levels of women’s participation in the workforce and what influence factors such as childcare have on female employment.

It found that women’s participation in the labour force is at 76% in Ireland and 72% in Northern Ireland, compared with 88% for men in Ireland and 81% in Northern Ireland.

The gender pay gap among full-time workers is higher in Ireland than in Northern Ireland, and women are 21% more likely to be part-time workers in both jurisdictions.

The report, which warned that pay comparisons “should be treated with some caution”, found that women were more likely to be low paid in Ireland than in Northern Ireland.

Some 25% of women and 18% of men in Ireland were classified as ‘low paid’ according to the research, while 21% of women and 14% of men in Northern Ireland were classified as low-paid or earn less than two-thirds of the median hourly pay.

One of the researchers, Garance Hingre, said that the proportion of people classified as ‘high earners’ and ‘low earners’ was greater in Ireland than north of the border, and “suggests that earnings may be more unequal in Ireland than in Northern Ireland”.

“Working in the private sector is associated with a higher probability of being low paid,” she said.

Professor Helen Russell of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) said they roughly estimated public sector workers as those employed in the health, education, public administration and defence sectors.

In Northern Ireland, 53% of working women work in those sectors while south of the border it is around 43%, she said.

Researchers Dr Frances McGinnity, Garance Hingre and Professor Helen Russell at the launch of the ESRI and Shared Island Unit’s report on Gender and Labour Market Inclusion on the island of Ireland
Gender and Labour Market Inclusion report Researchers Dr Frances McGinnity, Garance Hingre and Professor Helen Russell at the launch of the ESRI and Shared Island Unit’s report on Gender and Labour Market Inclusion on the island of Ireland (Niall Carson/PA)

“In general, that’s having a protective effect so they have a lower risk of being in the low pay group,” she said.

“We’ve seen this in lots of other research as well that that actually tends to narrow the gender pay gap if you’ve got more people in the public sector so I think that’s probably some of what’s going on.”

Professor Russell also said the educational differences between north and south were “quite stark”, and the research also found that higher education offered strong protection against low pay in both jurisdictions.

Ms Hingre highlighted graphs that indicated the gender pay gap between men and women both north and south of the border fell as levels of education increased.

Professor Russell also said that Ireland and the UK usually feature in the bottom end of international comparisons of childcare affordability, another factor influencing women’s participation in the workforce.

Some 75% of employed men in Ireland and 56% of employed men in Northern Ireland work more than 38 hours a week, while for women in Ireland and Northern Ireland the figures are 43% and 21% respectively.

Part-time workers, considered to work less than 30 hours a week, were significantly more likely to be women – 29% of employed women compared with 9% of men in Ireland, and 35% of employed women compared with 9% of men in Northern Ireland.

Equality commissioner for Northern Ireland Darren McKinstry said there appeared to be a fragility to the labour market in Northern Ireland, evidenced by shorter periods in education, lower accessibility of childcare, and the higher proportion of women working part-time.

He said that education was key in building up resilience to “challenge that fragility” and said the “value of flexibility” was important, such as access to childcare or for “sandwich care” – caring for the young and the elderly.

Dr Iris Elliot, head of policy and research at the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, said that there were some figures on disability in the report but none around race or ethnicity, which are known factors that influence workforce participation and pay.

She said there may be a false perception that there is progress on equality issues in Ireland in the wake of some referendum results in the country.

She also raised the importance of comparable data between north and south which could be more difficult after Brexit.

This is the 12th report from ESRI carried out in partnership with the Shared Island initiative.