Ivana Bacik (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will speak on amendment No. 5. Noting Senator O'Reilly's point, it is important when we quote these figures, as I did, from the CSO on the breakdown between men and women working part-time that clearly nobody is judging any decision to work part-time or otherwise. We have to be cognisant, however, that people make decisions and circumstances not of their choosing. Where there is a very clear gender divide, and where 29% of all women in the labour force work part-time compared with 11% of men, it does require legislators and policymakers to look behind these choices to see whether there are structural barriers to women working full-time who wish to do so. I am sure this is what Senator O'Reilly was speaking to. We need to ensure that where there is a particular segregation in a workplace, for example where all the women are concentrated at lower levels and the men are disproportionately in a majority at a higher level, that it is not just because people have chosen to stay in particular role. The whole point of gender pay gap legislation is to explore gendered reasons for segregation of this nature and segregation in a part-time workforce or at a particular level in a workforce.

Senator Higgins referred to the Athena Swan programme in which I have been involved in Trinity College. It is a very successful and effective way of offering a series of metrics and a set of measures to identify barriers to career progression and promotion on the basis of gender. It is very helpful and a good model for other places as well as academia. In academia, we are speaking about larger settings. Where settings are smaller and workforces are smaller, clearly there are issues with anonymity and anonymised data. At the same time, this should not stop us moving more swiftly to apply this legislation to smaller firms. I suppose I am thinking ahead to later amendments, which will also seek to expedite the legislation coming into effect most widely. We seek to move the threshold down from the high levels currently envisaged. Looking to other countries, Sweden has wage reporting for all firms with more than ten employees and in Finland it covers firms with more than 30 employees. There are ways and means to achieve gender pay gap reporting in smaller companies and smaller workforces without exposing people to breaches of privacy. We need to bear in mind that other countries have managed to do this.