€12,035 – the Gender Pay Gap in Irish Tech, 2022
€10,000 – the Gender Pay Gap in #IrishTech, 2018
Approximately 16,000 information and communications firms employ 119,000 people in Ireland (CSO, 2019). And of course, many firms in other sectors also have IT operations staff supporting the business. After manufacturing, the ICT sector generates the highest value added.
This is a profitable and wealthy sector with huge international players such as Apple and Microsoft as well as many smaller firms. 15% of employees earned over €1,600 weekly in 2014 (CSO), the highest percentage of any sector (the dark green bars). This sector also has less people on lower wages than other sections such as accommodation and food services.(the grey bars).
Ireland’s Gender Pay Gap in Technology
Overall Ireland’s business/industry sector gender pay gap is wide and the trajectory remains above 20% with the average woman pay significantly less than the average man. For STEM the gender pay gap in 2014 ranges between 14 and 22% with the average man earning more than the average woman (as depicted by the grey dotted line below).
Honeypot reported that the Irish gender pay gap in tech was 17.30% (2018) with Irish women in technology earning less than the overall average of €59,313 for tech workers. That amounts to €10,000 for the average woman in technology.
Despite this highly educated workforce, this gender pay gap starts early. For example, engineering graduates experienced a 6% difference in salary expectations between male and female graduates (Irishjobs.ie, with Universum). (Neither is the problem confined to technology graduates as “Ireland has the largest pay gap between men and women with third level qualifications in the OECD” (RTE).
Irish Gender Pay Gap At Technologies Big Players
Many of the big technology players in the Irish labour marketing, including Google, Salesforce and Microsoft have undertaken pay gap analyses and spent money to address inappropriate gender pay gaps (TechCrunch, 2018) although we don’t know if this impacted their Irish teams.
Ireland’s Technology Employment Gender Gap
Not only does the average man in technology and science earns more but these well paid jobs are predominantly held by men (in purple below). Below are two technology related sectors; ‘information and communication‘ (in the solid colours) and ‘professional, scientific and technical activities‘ (in the lined colours).
Overall approximately 1 in 4 people who work in technology are women with very little change over the past decade.
Blaming education is mixed bag. In 2018, women made up 41% of Irish STEM graduates, the highest globally. There are gender gaps in those choosing Irish university courses in technology, engineering and maths. Shamefully, one in 5 Irish secondary schools do not even offer physics. Sex-segregated curriculum are a feature of our cultural inheritance. Ireland is unusual in that about 1 in 4 of our children learn, and learn to collaborate in single-sex schools. Evidence suggest that the gender differential in maths is larger for children educated in single-sex schools than in coeducational schools.
Ireland’s Leadership Gap at Large Companies
A key aspect of the gender pay gap is the gender imbalance across the organizational ladder. There are more senior men, thus more highly paid men.
While there are no representative statistics for Irish companies, the CSO survey on gender representation invites large enterprises in Ireland to indicates the gender breakdown of leaders and those in senior positions. In 2019 the tech sector (NACE J), or rather those who choose to return a survey indicated female representation at 24% (only construction was worse at 9%). The sample size for the information and communication sector is not stated.
Choose a sector from the drop down box below this graph to compare the gender leadership gap in various Irish sectors ↓
More About Workplace Gender Gaps
- Oct 2022 – Ireland’s Gender Pay Gap is highest among IT Professionals
- Read the Irish Central Statistics Office Survey of Large Organizations from 2021
- Learn more from Institute for Women’s Policy Research Report on the Gender Wage Gap by Occupation Race and Ethnicity from 2018
- Reorient Your Organizations Towards Inclusion with this Vision Workshop