Press
release from The Iona Institute

Irish
women have better quality of life than Irish men says new OECD
report

 Report shows that a policy focus on gender
differences in the workplace is limited as measure of female
well-being

May 25, 2012 –
The OECD’s latest ‘Better Life Index’
shows that Irish women have a better overall quality of life than men when a
range of different factors is taken into account.

Those factors include:
life satisfaction; employment; health; education; social support; and work/life
balance.

The report shows that
men are more likely than women to be in paid employment (64 percent vs 58
percent respectively).

However, women report
slightly higher levels of life satisfaction than men, live longer, are better
educated, less likely to be victims of violent crime, and are slightly more
likely than men to report they have the right kind of social support in their
lives.

The report shows that a
focus on the number of men and women in paid employment does not accurately
capture the real differences between men and women.

A focus on paid
employment and average pay levels assumes that as many women as men want to work
full-time and ignores the fact that many women choose a different work/life
balance than men.

The most recent
Quarterly National Household Survey shows that 73 percent of women who work
part-time are not seeking more hours of work.

The fact that a third
of women in paid employment work part-time versus only 12 percent of men is the
main reason why there is a gap of 17 percent in average pay between men and
women. (This is in line with the EU average and the Swedish figure.)

Commenting on the OECD
report, Maria Steen of The Iona Institute said: “The study shows that when we
widen out our range of measures beyond paid employment we find that overall
women have a better quality of life than men.

“Focusing only or
mainly on paid employment does not capture the real experience of most women.
Different women have very different aims in terms of their work/life balance.
Some want to work full-time, others part-time and still others prefer to stay at
home full-time with their children. Many mix and match between these options as
they go through the various life stages.”

She concluded: “Despite
a tendency to measure our worth or contentment by reference to whether we earn
money and how much we earn, the truth is that our sense of well-being derives
from many sources, of which paid employment is only one, but which also include
good health, a sense of safety, participation in one’s community, education and
work-life balance.

When all of these
things are taken together, it emerges that Irish women have a slightly better
quality of life than Irish men. ”

ENDS

Notes to
Editors

1. The Iona Institute
is a pro-family think tank