Female participation in the Irish labour force is still well below the international average despite a significant increase in women working during the pandemic. Employment data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) put female participation across the 38-member bloc at 75 per cent in the third quarter of last year.
Recent figures from the Central Statistics Office estimated the rate of female participation here to be 58.9 per cent.
The participation rate is a measure of the economy’s active workforce, in other words those working and those seeking work.
The Republic has traditionally lagged peer countries in terms of the proportion of women working but during the pandemic more women took on roles in the labour market.
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Countries with higher levels of female empowerment tend to be more productive and therefore more prosperous. At the height of Celtic Tiger in 2007-2008, the level of female participation reached 57.6 per cent in the Irish workforce before falling in the immediate aftermath of the crash. The pandemic had appeared to change this pattern, however.
In 2020 and 2021, female participation here increased by 3½ percentage points to stand at a record 59.8 per cent (male participation is typically about 70 per cent).
The increase was attributed to increased remote working, which was said to free more women to work.
The assumption is that many women take up responsibility for caring roles in the family, which limits their ability to attend workplaces, at least in person.
The OECD figures published on Thursday show employment and labour force participation rates were stable at 69.5 per cent and 73.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2022, their highest levels since the start of the series in 2005 and 2008 respectively.
The employment rate for Ireland was slightly below the average at 72.8 per cent. The overall participation rate here was put at 76.2 per cent, above the OECD average.
About 40 per cent of OECD countries were at record highs for both indicators. The number of persons employed, as employees or self-employed workers, also reached its highest level at 607.9 million workers, the Paris-based agency said.
The OECD unemployment rate remained at 4.9 per cent in November, the agency said.
