Dr. Helen Russell:

I thank the committee for inviting the ESRI to attend today. My name is Helen Russell and I am the deputy head of the social research division at the institute. I am joined by my colleague, Dr. Frances McGinnity. Together we lead research on equality at the institute.

The role of the ESRI is to provide an evidence base for policy rather than advocate for a particular position, and it is in that capacity that we appear before the committee. In our submission we present a number of ESRI studies, which shed light on the changing gender roles and the distribution of paid work and unpaid, and care, in Ireland. The evidence shows that there is a clear mismatch between the role of women as framed in Article 41.2 of the Constitution and the reality of women's lives in the 21st century. Our research highlights the need to assess the impact of policy and legislation on gender inequalities both inside and outside the home and in both paid and unpaid work. It also reveals some of the complexities in defining unpaid work and care that may arise in the case of replacement wording for Article 41.2. In our submission, we focus on three issues, namely, how the role of women in Ireland in paid employment has changed; the measurement and distribution of care and unpaid work; and the nature of policy support for combining employment and caring for young children.

I will first deal with the changing position of women in the labour market. In a recent overview we documented this change over 50 years. We saw that, starting from a very low base, women's employment gradually increased over the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as a number of barriers were addressed, including the removal of the marriage bar and the introduction of equal pay legislation. Women's educational qualifications over that period also increased. The pace of change in women's employment accelerated even further in the 1990s and 2000s. This period encompassed both significant policy development and an upsurge in demand for labour during the Celtic tiger era. Women responded to these changes with a rapid movement into the labour market. The employment rate for women rose from 36% in 1990 to 60% in 2016. While the gender gap in employment rates has narrowed, gender differences persist in pay, the hours of work and conditions. For example, one third of women work part-time compared with 13% of men and the gender pay gap has stuck at around 15%.

The increase in female employment has been widespread and has included the mothers of young children. In the Growing Up in Ireland study we oversee at the ESRI, we found that just over 50% of mothers are in employment when their child turns three years of age and almost 60% by the time their child is aged five, although OECD figures still show that the rate of employment among mothers of young children in Ireland is below the OECD average. In summary, this evidence suggests that many women enter employment when afforded the opportunity and barriers are removed, though significant gender differences persist in the labour market.

I will now turn to our research on the gender division of caring and unpaid work and whether there has been a corresponding shift in men and women's involvement in unpaid work and caring. There is significantly less information on this side of the equation. I think that reflects the lack of visibility and the undervaluing of care work. One of the first issues we need to consider when researching this issue is how broadly "unpaid" should be defined. From a gender equality perspective, the distribution of domestic work such as cooking and housework is really important. Therefore, in our research and, indeed, the international research on gender equality, we include both aspects alongside caring.

Time-use surveys are seen as the gold standard for measuring non-market work. In Ireland there has been only one national survey of this kind, which we carried out at the ESRI in 2005 with support from the Department of Justice and Equality. The survey showed that the quantity of this unpaid work is very substantial indeed, and that its distribution is strongly gendered. On average, women spend just less than five hours per day on unpaid work while men did just under two hours of unpaid work per day. Within this, women spent an average of two and a half hours per day on care, while men spent 39 minutes and these figures include care for both adults and children. Data on the distribution of care work from a European-wide survey allow for some comparison over time. It showed that in 2016, 44% of women and 25% of men in Ireland were involved in care work on a daily basis. These figures were virtually unchanged since 2003, when the first European survey was undertaken. The research suggests that there has been some change in the division of housework in Ireland but the gender gap for it remains wide.

In summary, the research highlights the scale of care and unpaid work and the importance of the making visible and valuing these activities from a gender equality perspective. One step towards highlighting unpaid work is to measure it regularly by collecting time-use surveys like other countries do. Such a measure would allow for an economic valuation of care work.

The final issue that the ESRI researched was the policy supports for combining care and employment. In this section we focused on the care of children because that is where our own work has centred. Historically, there has been a very low level of State support for childcare in Ireland. Investment and policy development was, in part, curtailed by political ambiguity about the merits of supporting mothers to enter employment. There has been an increase in investment in childcare over the past decade, including the introduction of the free preschool year and the affordable childcare scheme, which represents a shift in policy. Nevertheless families face a high burden of costs. Comparative research shows that the cost of childcare in Ireland is one of the highest across the OECD. The ESRI study showed that parents pay an average of 12% of disposable household income on childcare for one child aged three. The study also clearly demonstrated that the amount that families pay for childcare affects how much paid employment mothers subsequently do, and that higher costs are associated with a subsequent reduction in women's paid work hours.

A further finding of the study was the considerable involvement of relatives, particularly grandparents, in providing childcare in Ireland. At three years of age, among the children who are looked after outside of their homes, 23% of them were being cared for by a relative. Some of that care was paid while some was unpaid. In 55% of the cases, the relative was unpaid but in 45% of the cases the relative was paid. This highlights the blurred boundaries between care inside and outside the home and between paid versus unpaid caring. We might have to grapple with that and provide alternative wording.

I will briefly discuss parental and maternity leave. Family leave is another important element of supporting the combination of paid work and care for children. Provision for parents takes the form of maternity leave, paternity leave and parental leave. The duration of maternity leave compares reasonably well with other European countries. However, the relatively low maximum threshold means that the replacement rate for maternity benefit in Ireland falls well below the level found in a number of comparable EU countries. Parental leave for both parents has been extended to 18 weeks per child but is unpaid and a father's entitlement to paid leave is confined to two weeks of paternity leave. When one combines those supports and consider the amount and value of paid leave, one finds that Ireland falls in the lowest of three groups across 43 countries. There is considerable scope there for improvement. The international evidence also suggests that where fathers take parental leave, it can lead to a greater sharing of unpaid work and care within the household, and that uptake by fathers is strongly related to payment. We know that the uptake of unpaid parental leave is very low among fathers in Ireland. This evidence suggests that combining work and the caring of young children in Ireland remains challenging, and that there are still significant gaps in support.

In conclusion, the research that we have drawn on highlights there have been very significant changes in gender roles in Ireland but also the continued relevance of gender inequalities in the public and private sphere. Care and unpaid work have consistently been undervalued yet the scale of that endeavour is very substantial.

The removal of the outdated gender stereotyping contained in Article 41.2 is an important symbolic move in terms of gender equality, a point that is recognised by a wide range of bodies. Our research does not speak directly to whether it should be replaced by another form of text. It highlights a small part of the complexity that faces individuals and families in balancing paid work, housework and care needs, which change over people's lifetimes. It also presents some of the issues involved in defining care and non-market work that are likely to arise in the framing and interpretation of alternative wording to the article. Our research also underlines the importance of a series of incremental legislative and policy changes that aimed to remove barriers to women's entry to the labour market and reduce gender inequalities in employment and access to resources. These supports remain necessary so that women can exercise their right to equal participation in public life while recognising and valuing contributions to care work.