Fairer rate of pay in North
‘MORE IN PUBLIC SECTOR THERE’
WOMEN in the Republic are more likely to be low paid compared to those in the North, according to a report.
The report’s authors suggested that a more narrow gender pay gap in the North was because of a higher percentage of public sector workers in the region.
The Economic and Social Research Institute study looked at pay, education and levels of women’s participation in the workforce and what influence factors such as childcare have on female staff.
It found that women’s participation in the labour force is at 76 per cent in Ireland and 72 per cent in NI, compared with 88 per cent for men here and 81 per cent in NI.
The gender pay gap among full-time workers is higher in Ireland than in Northern Ireland, and women are 21 per cent 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 here than in NI.
A quarter of women and 18 per cent of men here were classified as ‘low paid’ according to research, while 21 per cent of women and 14 per cent of men in the North were classified as low-paid or earn less than twothirds of the median hourly pay.
One of the researchers, Garance Hingre, said 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.
Prof Helen Russell, of the ESRI, said they roughly estimated public sector workers as those employed in the health, education, public administration and defence.
Risk
In the North, 53 per cent of working women work in those sectors while here it is around 43 per cent, she said.
“In general, that’s having a protective effect so they have a lower risk of being in the low pay group.”
Prof Russell also said the educational differences between north and south were “quite stark”, and the research found that higher education offered strong protection against low pay in both jurisdictions.
She said 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.