Are women in your workplace earning less? A new Government website lifts the lid

Do women in your workplace have the same average earnings as men? A new Government website will make it easier for you to find out.Ireland’s national gender pay gap stands at 8.3 per cent, according to figures quoted by the Department of Equality this year. That’s the average difference in pay between all men and all women in the workforce. If you’re a woman working in an organisation on the wrong side of the gap, it pays to know about it. New data published from next month aims to lift the lid on gaps in pay and equip you to find out how your workplace measures up.New portal By the end of November, all employers with more than 50 employees must publish data about their gender pay gap to a new public gender pay gap portal. READ MOREThe gender pay gap is the average difference in pay between all men and all women in an organisation. If you are a woman working in an organisation where there is a big gap, it doesn’t bode well for your finances. The pay portal has been open for voluntary reporting since last year and viewable to the public since June, but publication by employers is about to become mandatory. The Employment Equality Bill 2026 will be enacted in the coming weeks, with individual company gender pay gap figures for 2026 available to view by the end of November, Minister for Equality Norma Foley told the Dáil last week. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) put Ireland’s national gender pay gap at 9.6 per cent in 2022. Mean hourly earnings for men were €27.73 and €25.06 for women, a gap of €2.67. As age increases, the gender pay gap grows. The biggest gap was in the 50-59 age group at 16.7 per cent, with men earning €33.03 and women earning €27.51.Sectors such as construction, aviation and finance tend to show wider gaps due to male-dominated senior roles, while education and healthcare often show the opposite trend.In many cases, it’s less about pay rates and more about representation at senior levels, says UCD’s Professional Academy. It’s important to note the gender pay gap is not a test of whether men and women in an organisation are paid equally for the same work – that’s already required by law. Rather, it highlights imbalances that influence how opportunities are distributed, according to the academy. If your organisation has a big gender pay gap, there may be some telltale signs. There are probably fewer women in senior or higher-paid roles; there is an over-representation of women in lower-paid or part-time roles in a company; maybe there is unconscious bias or barriers to the progression of women; there is a culture where availing of hybrid working is frowned on; or maybe there is a culture where the men who work there never take leave for caring responsibilities. [ Female participation in Irish workforce jumps 90% since 2000Opens in new window ]Some or all of these characteristics can contribute to a workplace where pay between genders is out of whack.If you work in or are interviewing for a role in an organisation with a big pay gap, the impact can ripple far beyond your pay cheque.Lower average pay than male colleagues in an organisation can mean women there get a smaller percentage pay rise than male colleagues, receive a less generous pay-linked bonus, are unable to borrow as much their male colleagues can to buy a house, and end up with smaller pensions in retirement. If you are already in a job or scouting for a new one, the new pay gap portal will make it easier to look under the bonnet and see the reality of the hiring, pay, promotion practices and culture there. Scores on the doorsGender pay gap reporting requires employers to choose a snapshot day in June this year, and use pay information for the previous 12 months for their pay gap calculations. Employers then have five months to publish their report, by the end of November. Microsoft president Brad Smith: Ireland is “well-positioned for future of AI”Some 1,000 employers have now created accounts on the portal in preparation for publishing their reports by the end of next month, the Department of Equality says. Some firms have been proactive, voluntarily publishing their 2025 pay gap data to the portal. You’ll find 410 such reports already published.Searching the portal by company name and looking for the mean, or average gender pay gap, is a useful metric for employees, says Michelle McDonagh, chief client officer at human resource management consultancy Adare.If you see a large gender pay gap percentage, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the organisation is paying women unfairly, says McDonagh. “Gender pay gap measures the pay of all men and compares it against all women. There is no allowance for the type of role, length of service, level of seniority or expertise,” she says. “It’s a blunt instrument in that regard.”The gender pay gap figure, however, is a useful indicator of hiring and promotion practices, policies and culture in a company. [ Being a working mother is a horror show at times. The stress can be cripplingOpens in new window ]A zero per cent pay gap is the ideal. That would mean men and women’s pay is perfectly balanced.A positive gender pay gap, of five per cent for example, means women earn five per cent less on average than men. A negative, or minus gap, means men earn less than women on average. “Most organisations will have a positive figure because in most organisations, women will earn less than men on average,” says McDonagh.Comparing companies by sector can provide an interesting perspective.Take the telecommunications, computer programming and consulting sector in the data, for example. This is one of the most highly remunerated sectors in the country. Consultancy firm Deloitte has been proactive in publishing its data and reports a 5.2 per cent gender pay gap for 2025 in favour of men. Another useful search in the portal is “distribution of gender by pay quartile”. This requires bosses to segment their workforce by pay band and tell you the balance of men and women in each of four different bands. Looking at Deloitte, there were 10 per cent more women than men in the lower middle pay band in 2025, but 4 per cent more men than women in the very top pay band.“One of the trends we tend to see in companies is if there are a lot of females coming into lower-paid roles and for whatever reason they are not progressing through the ranks,” says McDonagh.“Then you see a lot of males in the higher-paid roles and women’s representation drops away as they move through those different pay quartiles.” [ What top CEO pay and gender pay gap reporting tell us about Irish businessOpens in new window ]Companies are required to publish a statement about what is causing their pay gap and what they are going to do about it. Deloitte’s statement says the company has met its target of 35 per cent female partners by 2025. “We aim to increase this to 40 per cent by 2027, with a 50 per cent longer-term goal,” according to the firm. Data for PwC shows a 1.6 per cent gender pay gap for 2025 in the mean hourly pay of female and male employees. Women and men are 50:50 in the lowest pay quartile, but there are 10 per cent more women than men in the topmost pay quartile. ‘Women make up at least half of our population. This, in turn, has had a significant influence on the outcome of our gender pay gap analysis,” says PwC. KPMG, Ernst & Young (EY) or Accenture have not published data on the portal for 2025. They will be required to publish their 2026 data by the end of November. They were required to publish 2025 pay gap data on their own websites, however. KPMG reports an average gender pay gap of 11.1 per cent for 2025 – the organisation comprises 51 per cent women and 49 per cent men. There are more women than men in all three lower pay quartiles, but 11 per cent more men at the top pay quartile. There is a 23.2 per cent average bonus gap between men and women at the consulting firm, its report says. At partner level, women represent 24 per cent of partners. The pay gap between female and male partners is 5.6 per cent. [ Pay transparency rules could cause conflict in workplaces, say HR and law expertsOpens in new window ]The mean pay gap at Accenture for 2025 is 9.2 per cent. The number of women and men are almost equal in all pay quartiles – except at the top one where there are 10 per cent more men in the highest pay grade. The mean pay gap at EY for 2025 is 6.5 per cent. Some 71 per cent of partners are male. Meta Platforms Ireland, which employs 95 per cent of Meta’s staff here, has a 2025 gender pay gap of 26.5 per cent, and an average bonus pay gap of 37 per cent. The company employs an almost equal number of men and women. The number of women at Meta is greatest in its lowest pay quartile, where there are 62 per cent women, and the number of women is fewest in the highest pay quartile, where there are 63 per cent men. Women are better represented in non-tech roles in the company, Meta says. Tech roles, like software engineers, are typically paid more in the market, and this has a disproportionate impact on pay gaps, it says. The bonus gap is higher than the hourly pay gap, which is primarily driven by higher tech equity, it says. Hooke & MacDonald is the only large real estate firm to have voluntarily published its gender pay gap data to the Government portal for 2025. It reports a 13 per cent gender pay gap in the mean hourly pay of female employees and of male employees. “We are clear that our pay gap arises as a result of a greater proportion of males in senior positions in specific areas of the business and on higher pay points within those grades – due to longer service in those roles. This significantly contributes to the pay gap,” the company says. Government organisations have been busy reporting their data too.An Coimiusiún Pleanála, for example, had a 6.1 per cent gender pay gap in 2025. It’s an improvement of 9.4 per cent on the previous year.This is down to a relatively higher share of roles taken up by women in administrative grades, which have a lower average hourly pay than other grades, it says. There are 8 per cent more women than men in the second-from-top pay band, but 12 per cent more men in the top band. “A great deal of effort [is being made] in recent years to improve our gender balance at senior manager level, including actively supporting family-friendly initiatives such as hybrid working, work sharing, statutory leave schemes and the shorter working year scheme,” says the commission. The commission reported its 2025 pay gap in three categories – men, women and non-binary – but says the format of the portal makes it impossible to fully report on pay gap statistics for the three groups. An Post reports a zero gender pay gap for the fifth consecutive year. Its 2025 data shows a mean hourly gender pay gap of minus 4.85 per cent in favour of women. It has an equal percentage of male and female executive directors. [ Banking and finance sectors slow to disclose salary information, data showsOpens in new window ]PerceptionGender pay gap stats may be particularly beneficial to women in the middle pay quartile, says McDonagh.“If you can see the norm in your company is for more male representation at the top, maybe you hadn’t realised that’s the context you are working in – the report will tell you that,” says McDonagh.“Then you are going to have to take charge of your own career, you are going to have to drive it yourself.“If the stats tell you that men in your organisation have the majority of the income, you are going to have to drive those conversations with your manager yourself to make sure you are getting the opportunity to progress. Keep asking the question, what do I have to do to move up?”The data is a very public opening of the kimono for organisations, and at a time when HR headcount and diversity and inclusion initiatives are under fire. “Some 64 per cent of employers have identified employee perception as their biggest concern about publication of their gender pay gap report,” says Adare’s McDonagh of her company’s most recent HR Barometer data. While gender pay gap statistics can be a bit of a blunt instrument, the statement employers are required to publish explaining the data can be insightful, says McDonagh.This self-examination requires them to explain the cause of their gender pay gap and what they are going to do about it. Work to transpose the remaining parts of the European Union (EU) Pay Transparency Directive is continuing, the department says. This will include the obligation for employers to carry out a gender-neutral job evaluation. This requires employers to examine why they are remunerating some types of work more than others. It involves assessing the value of different types of work in their organisation, putting work of similar value into the same category and ensuring these people are similarly paid.This means equal pay for those doing work of the same value too – even if that work looks quite different. In UK clothing retailer Next, for example, the mostly female sales staff were found to be earning less than the company’s mostly male warehouse workers. Even though their jobs seem different, the retail staff contributed work of equal value to the warehouse workers, a tribunal found. Employers will be invited to training to help them compare work objectively – based on skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions – to eliminate gender pay gaps and bias.Done right, this could upend old pay structures that have unfairly rewarded some skills over others, for no objective reason.