Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

International Women's Day is an important day for us all and a reminder of the need for equality and mutual respect among all people. I acknowledge all the women who are experiencing conflict and displacement at this time. Among their number are the many Ukrainian women and girls who have come to Ireland for protection over the past year.

As Minister with responsibility for gender equality, International Women’s Day is a significant day and a reminder of my Department’s mission of working towards "a fair, equal and inclusive society where rights are respected, and where everyone can reach their potential". Over the coming months, my Department will begin consultations with a view to developing a successor strategy to the National Strategy for Women and Girls. The new strategy will respond to the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality and set our agenda for the next period. Among the key issues to be addressed are the recommendations for amendments to Articles 40 and 41 of the Constitution, which will be a priority for the Government to progress over the coming months. The year 2022 has been a year in which, despite significant and ongoing challenges, we have kept gender equality high on the agenda and succeeded in bringing to fruition a number of initiatives that have been planned and implemented under the National Strategy for Women and Girls.

Continuing with the expansion of family leave to support working parents, the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2022 passed all stages in the Seanad last week. When enacted, this will provide for a right to request flexible working, leave for medical care purposes, and extend the entitlement to breast-feeding breaks under the maternity protection Acts to two full years. This will also support the long-standing policy to support a greater uptake of breast-feeding in a child’s first two years and support women's return to work after maternity leave. The Government is committed to further extending parent’s leave and benefit to nine weeks by August 2024.

We have delivered on the commitment in the National Strategy for Women and Girls to promote pay transparency by requiring employers to calculate and publish information on the gender pay gaps within their organisation, beginning in December 2022 with large employers. Over the coming years, these reporting obligations will be extended to organisations with more than 150, and then 50, employees. I am pleased to see employers across the private and public sector engaging with their findings and examining the factors that contribute to pay gaps. It is heartening to see exemplars of good practice already emerging. Gender pay gap reporting is providing transparency for employees as to what companies are doing and which companies are doing the most to address their gender pay gaps.

Gender pay gap reporting has highlighted imbalances in the representation of women and men at different levels across organisations and sectors that contribute to the existence of gender pay gaps. In particular, it has made transparent an under-representation of women in leadership and decision-making roles. My Department plans to develop a centralised reporting database for future reporting cycles that will provide easier access to these reports, and easier comparison of employers’ gender pay gap metrics across sectors and over time.

In a diverse range of sectors across our society, steps have been taken across government to ensure that women’s voices are amplified in areas where they were previously under-represented, with the recent Common Agriculture Policy, for example, committing to increase women’s active participation in farming. In the ICT sector, Harnessing Digital, Ireland’s national digital strategy, aims to increase the number of women in leadership roles in digital companies. This week, in leading Ireland’s delegation to the 67th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, I contributed to discussion on the priority theme of innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. In this context, recent strategies, such as the new digital strategy for schools that aims to ensure that girls and boys have equal access to digital education, are key to facilitating women to participate and progress in careers in new and emerging technologies.

I thank the Senators for this opportunity to speak to them on this issue, as we mark the very important day of International Women’s Day. As I outlined, the Government is continuing to work to address gender inequality across a range of areas. In the coming months, we aim to keep the momentum built up over the last year, with a view to seeing the development of a successor strategy to the National Strategy for Women and Girls, which will respond to the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality. I thank the Senators for the invitation. I look forward to their contributions and responding to them later.