New Study Reveals Irish Women are Paid an Average of 20% Less Than Men.

A new study by Morgan McKinley has found that men in professional jobs earn €12,500 more than women, when bonus and salary are taken into account.

The salary data of more than 5,500 professionals across a number of different sectors was gathered as part of the survey.

It also revealed that the gap was actually wider for women who had high levels of education or a lot of experience.

Chief Operations Officer of Morgan McKinley Karen O’Flaherty says employers and individual women have a big role to play in reducing the gender pay gap: “It’s about employers having the transparency and visibility within the organisation to look at the different levels and see who is being promoted and the different educational attainments that they get at each stage.
“Secondly it is about addressing and maybe asking the question as to why certain females don’t go for certain positions when some men have.
“So it is opening up a cultural difference that possibly we haven’t had in a number of organisations and businesses.”

National Women’s Council of Ireland Orla O’Connor said “The report also clearly highlights how the low proportion of women in senior managerial positions impacts on the gender pay gap.

“For women who make it to senior executive level, they are paid almost the same as men. The problem is that 38% of professionals with 15 plus years’ of experience are women versus 62% are men.

“Without a doubt, the fact that Ireland has among the highest childcare costs in Europe has an impact on women being forced out of the workforce, contributing to far higher number of men in senior positions”.

The study saw Morgan McKinley partner with salary benchmarking company Emolument to collect data

The financial services sector had the highest pay gap at 29 per cent, while the technology sector had the lowest at seven per cent.

The one stand-out exception in all this data is HR where there has traditionally been a disproportionately higher number of female HR Leaders than males. The balance stands at 73% female to 27% male at the moment and this has led to a 15% higher salary differential in favour of female HR leaders.