Ms Angela Smith:

I am the CEO of WorkEqual. The mission of WorkEqual is to promote the economic independence of women and build an Ireland that champions workplace equality. We are a registered charity providing free supports nationally to women entering or re-entering the workforce. This includes professional styling, mentoring and career development services. Our clients are very diverse, but we work in particular with women who face challenges accessing the labour market. We partner with grassroots community groups and specialist support services such as the Irish Refugee Council, the Liberties Training Centre and Empower in providing our services to those most in need.

Our work is supported by a range of corporate partners including Permanent TSB, SOLAS, Oracle and Indeed. They provide funding and volunteers to support our service provision and campaigning. At WorkEqual, we help women to access labour market opportunities but through client feedback, we became increasingly aware that women face additional challenges and barriers in their career progression. This is particularly true of women from less advantaged backgrounds and women who have been out of the workforce for long periods.

This has informed our campaigning work. Since 2016, we have run an awareness campaign every November to highlight and tackle gender inequalities in Irish workplaces centred around Equal Pay Day, the date on which women effectively stop earning relative to men because of the gender pay gap. As many committee members will be aware, a WorkEqual Oireachtas all-party group was formed in 2018 and is currently co-chaired by Deputy Bacik and Senators Lorraine Clifford-Lee and Emer Currie. We have also established a strong working relationship with colleagues in Iceland, particularly the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association, to understand and learn from global gold standard.

Within the workplace equality landscape, we occupy a unique position because we bridge the gap between employees, employers and policymakers. We have followed the progress of this committee keenly and we very much welcomed the report from the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality. I will pass over to Ms Lennon to speak about how our work specifically relates to recommendations No. 32 to 36 of the citizens’ assembly report.