Women and Men in Ireland 2009

Males leave school earlier; Women are better qualified

Males are more likely to leave school early and females are more likely to have a third-level qualification. Women live longer than men, work fewer hours, earn less and are under-represented in local and regional authorities and in the Oireachtas according to the report Women and Men in Ireland 2009 published by the CSO today. Men have a higher rate of employment, but also a higher rate of unemployment. Most workers in the Health and Education sectors are women but they are not well represented at senior level. Women are more likely to be admitted to hospital with depression and men are more likely to be admitted with schizophrenia and alcoholic disorders. The prison population is overwhelmingly male and most murder victims are male.

Other highlights of the report include:

Education: The early school leavers rate among women aged 18-24 in 2007 was 8.7%, which was much lower than the male rate of 14.2%. There were higher proportions of girls taking English, Irish and French at higher level in the 2009 Leaving Certificate, while boys had higher rates of participation in technical subjects. Over 90% of Leaving Certificate students taking higher level Design and communication graphics, Construction studies and Engineering were male. This pattern continued at third-level, with men accounting for around 84% of graduates in Engineering, manufacturing and construction and 60% of graduates in Science, while women accounted for 79% of graduates in Health and welfare, 76% in Education and 65% in Arts and humanities. Women are more likely to have a third-level qualification, with 51% of women aged 25-34 having a third-level qualification compared with 38.7% of men in this age group.

Employment: The employment rate for men in Ireland stood at about 75% over the years, but in 2009 it fell sharply to 67.3%. The employment rate for women also fell in 2009, but to a far lesser extent. The EU target rate for women in employment is 60% by 2010, a target that was met by Ireland in 2007 and 2008, but not in 2009 when the employment rate for women fell to 57.8%.

Unemployment: The unemployment rate for men in Ireland was about 5% in recent years but in 2009 it increased sharply to 15.1%. The unemployment rate for women, which stood at about 4% over the last few years, also increased in 2009 to stand at 8.1%. These large increases were reflected in all age groups, and in particular for those aged 15 to 19, with an unemployment rate of 40% for men aged 15 to 19 in 2009 and 32.3% for women.

Politics: The report shows that women are under-represented in decision-making structures at both national and regional levels. In 2009, only 14% of TDs in Dáil Eireann were women, while they accounted for 34% of members of State Boards, 17% of members of local authorities and just 12% of members of regional authorities. The average representation in national parliaments for EU 27 countries was nearly 24% in 2009.

Population: Of all EU countries in 2008, Ireland was the only one that was perfectly gender-balanced, with 100 women per 100 men in the population. This masks differences in the age groups: at younger ages, there are more boys than girls (as more boys are born than girls), and at older ages, there are more women than men (as women live longer than men).  For the 65+ group, there were 80 men per 100 women in Ireland.

Migration: The years of high immigration to Ireland were 2005 to 2008. In 2006, immigration peaked at 60,300 for men. A year later, it peaked at 52,100 for women with record immigration in 2007 of 109,500 persons. Since then, immigration has fallen very sharply for both sexes. Emigration rose very sharply in 2009, especially for men, resulting in a net outflow of 10,800 males in that year.

Life and death: Life expectancy for women in Ireland was 81.6 years in 2006, nearly 5 years more than the value for men of 76.8 years. Life expectancy for men is 1 year greater than the 2006 EU average, while for women it is just under half a year less than the 2006 EU average. Men are more likely to die at a younger age than women, with the difference in risk particularly high in the 15-24 years age group. This reflects a greater tendency for young men to commit suicide and to be victims of motor vehicle accidents.

Health: Women were more likely to be hospitalised in 2008, with 331.8 hospital discharges per 1,000 women (of which 16.9 per 1,000 were pregnancy related) compared with 285.5 discharges per 1,000 men. The male rate of admission for alcoholic disorders and schizophrenia was over 60% higher than the female rate while the female rate of dmission for depression was over 40% higher than the male rate.

Occupations: There were 886,500 women and 1,052,000 men employed in Ireland in 2009. Over one fifth of the women were employed in clerical and secretarial occupations, compared with only 5.6% of the men. Craft and related occupations was the least gender-balanced occupation with men representing 96.1% of workers in this category.

Economic sectors: The education and health sectors employed the highest proportion of women. In the health sector, 80% of employees are women. In primary education, 84% are women. And in second-level education, 62% are women. Despite this, women are not well represented at senior level positions: only 33% of medical and dental consultants are
women, 52% of primary school managers, and 39% of second-level school managers.

Income: Women’s income in 2007 was around two-thirds of men’s income. After adjusting for the longer hours worked by men, women’s hourly earnings were around 87% of men’s.

Poverty: The proportion of men at risk of poverty in 2008, after pensions and social transfers, was 14% compared to 16% of women. At risk of poverty rates were considerably lower for employedmen and women, at 7% formen and 6% for women.

Crime: There were 6,455 persons committed to prison under sentence in 2007, of whom 7.4% were women. Just over 80% of murder/manslaughter victims were male in 2007.

Editor's note

Women and Men in Ireland, 2009 is available on the CSO web site (www.cso.ie)

The report may be purchased from:

The Central Statistics Office, Information Section, Skehard Road, Cork
Government Publications Sales Office, Sun Alliance House, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2
or through any bookseller

For further information: contact Helen Cahill (01 498 4253) or Adrian Redmond (01 498 4309).

Central Statistics Office

09 February 2010

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