When I read this earlier, I assumed it was a product of the recession – as Ronan says, more women are leaving the home to work now, whether through necessity or choice. But it seems the study looks at a number of different factors that have an impact on women’s lives. I wonder if childcare provision, or the availability of healthcare were among them? If so, the Irish ranking is even more surprising.

I wonder whether many Irish women would feel they have it better than their counterparts in Denmark, Germany, Switzrland and the UK?

given that our political discourse is dominated by the bogey-men of Church/state and to some
extent Broadcast meeja, I would say the figures look grand with the inevitable rant that NO
the top-tables are still male-dominated. The Dáil is a mess imo- with perfectly qualified
women relegated to lobbies and NGO’s whilst some badly managed young male
politicos dominate media through spurious use of social-media and evident HUGE budgetary
PR allowances.

This survey is but a skeltal structure which ignores that Ireland is driven by a conservative
group of males who put issues like blasphemy above the need for Child Protection Referenda,
or ignore criminal justice issues such as rape to forward what appear to be idiotic and money
-wasting vanity projects.

lest I continue this rant any further, I’d just like to look at the portfolios that women cabinet
members carry, and ask how long it is since women held Justice/policing/legal/local
governmental portfolios ?

Tokenism is rampant and has been for years. so we have women workers but not women
who drive political and media discourse- with honourable exceptions. I am interested in
who will be rolled out to address the news on the media- the minister for equality, who
is numbered amongst those who reject gender-quotas ? or the Minister for Education
who does not like adding her ideas to the political melt ??

Keep a small notebook on you at all times, simply because you never know when an idea will pop into your head. An concept can come to you any time, such as when you’re on the train, walking via the park, or on an airplane, and you might not have anywhere to log the concept. I was once walking down the street, and saw this boy who looked so forlorn, and I took a notebook, and when I got onto the bus, I took out my notebook and began composing a back-story to the boy — why was he so upset? What happened to make him upset? From that, I got several ideas for different stories, 1 of which I’m done with, and 1 that might become a novella. If you have a notebook and pen or pencil on hand, you are always close to some thing where you can log everything that comes from your mind. Ideas can come at any time, so it’s good to be prepared for a flash of genius that will inevitably come.

Is this a gender gap, or a women’s gap? Conceivable, gender gap could easily go into reverse, not as far-fetched as it sounds when one considers:
(1) That among the 25-64 population, unemployment in the male cohort least affected by the recession (the eldest) is higher than among the most affected female cohort (the youngest)
(2) Educational attainment is most certainly not “equal”, with girls performing significantly better than boys at secondary and increasingly tertiary education.
I’m not for a minute arguing this is a woman’s world (to borrow from Mary Byrne!), but rather if this is a Gender Equality report, rather than just a Women’s Disadvantage Report, it will have to cut both ways. Ireland’s education score suggests that it is the latter, despite its name.