Workforce gender gaps, that is differences between the numbers of women and men in the workforce, is one way of considering workforce inequality. While the census does not contain information about salary, it does consider employment status, or rather “economic activity”. These statistics shed light on the overall difference between women’s and men’s employment gaps.
The census is self-reported data. Only sex (not gender) was offered as an option in Northern Ireland’s 2021 census. It’s also worth remembering that this census took place during the covid-19 pandemic. Data for Lisburn and Castlereagh is not available due to small numbers in some categories (known as ‘statistical disclosure control’).
There are four primary categories for the ‘economically active’ in Northern Ireland. Employees make up the largest group by far with around 625,000 people. This is the only category that is reasonably balanced. In fact, women (shown in green) make up 52% of this group which is unusual. (For example, in the Republic of Ireland in 2020 the gender employment gap was ~12% and the EU 11%.) Northern Ireland’s has a relatively large public sector, and more women are employed there. Coupled with limited private sector employment options, this creates the somewhat unusual almost-balanced workforce situation with approximately equal numbers of women (322,642) and men (303,825) in employment.
The three other categories show significant, and all too common, imbalance in the paid workforce. Men (purple) dominate the other three groups; unemployment, self-employment without employees, and self-employment with employees.
While the numbers for the other 3 categories are much smaller than those working as employees, each shows more men (purple) than women (green). The largest difference is in the group, self-employed without employees that makes up 12% of the total, but is made up of just 23,929 women but 68,094 men. While self-employed with employees is overall a small number, just 3%, these employers are predominately men (19,475) who outweigh women-employers by 3 to 1. So there were just 6,255 female employers in Northern Ireland in 2021.
Those unemployed were 12,000 women and 20,000 men, a ratio of 3 women for every 5 men which together make up 4% during the survey in 2021. Combining the four categories, including those seeking work (unemployed), women make up 47% of the labour force in Northern Ireland.
Self-Employed by Sector in Northern Ireland 2021
Amongst the self-employed without employees, four sectors show women significantly under-represented. Construction is sometime seen as including those in ‘bogus self-employment‘, an employment status used to circumvent contributing to the public purse and avoiding employer’s responsibilities. This may be one reason why men greatly outnumber women in self-employment without employees, 68,000 to 24,000: If bogus self-employment indeed exists some of those self-employed in the construction sector could be more accurately included in the the employee group increasing the total numbers of male employees. (Learn more about the sector classification here.)
Horizontal, i.e. Sectoral, Gaps in Self-Employment
Another note worthy backdrop is thinking about the horizontal pay gap, where women are more likely to be employed in lower paid sectors. Self-employed people are likely to bring their experience, gained in employment, into their self-employment, i.e. they likely stay in the same sector. The horizontal pay gap is a significant contributor to the gender pay gap. The census does not provide any income information so its impossible to tell from this data alone but there are clear horizontal employment gaps in most sectors in Northern Ireland.
Self-Employed With Employees
Business Owners by Sector in Northern Ireland 2021
Business owners, particularly privately-owned businesses, offer the owner tremendous flexibility in workplace conditions. For those who, not only create a job for themselves but also create the workplace culture of their organization, this offers tremendous freedom as well as responsibility for employees. This group in Northern Ireland amounts to almost 26,000 people. As above, women-employers are outnumbered by men approximately 3 to 1.
The industry graph also show the typical horizontal gender gap with more women business owners in lower paid sectors, i.e. women dominate in the sectors shown on the right-side of the graph below. Women make up between 5% (in construction) and 29% (hospitality) of the business owners in the sectors shown on the left, but there is almost parity between women and men in public administration, education, health, arts and entertainment, the two right-hand sectors, at 42-58% .
Future exploration could consider:
- demographic aspects beyond gender, such as age, ethnic group, religion, and education,
- compare self-employed versus employees demographics, such as education and age,
- compare industry sectors to explore the make-up of people working in each,
- geographical differences within Northern Ireland
- comparison to other countries.
With thanks to Global Women’s Institute for Leadership, King’s College London, England, and Northern Ireland Women Budget Group, WBG.