Minister O’Gorman publishes gender norms report to inform gender equality policy

Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman, T.D., has today published a report on gender norms in Ireland. The report compiles data from a number of sources to track Ireland’s progress on the indicators used to measure the 10 norms of restrictive masculinities, as outlined by the OECD Report Man Enough? Measuring Masculine Norms to Promote Women’s Empowerment.

The report includes indicators from the economic sphere; where restrictive masculinities undervalue women’s economic contribution and support the view that men’s labour is more important and valuable than women’s work. Some of the findings from the report show that:

• a significant proportion of the population believes that the most important role of a man is to earn money and the most important role of a woman is to take care of her home and family.
• there is a higher proportion of low wage earners among employed women than among employed men, with women more likely than men to be earning the minimum wage or less.
• The gender pay gap In Ireland has decreased since 2011, and was lower than the EU average in 2018.
• the percentage of employed women in managerial positions in Ireland, which was just over one thirds in 2020, has risen consistently since 2012, and was higher than the EU average in 2020.

In the political sphere, these norms uphold the view that leadership is a masculine characteristic and that men inherently make better leaders than women. Some of the findings from the report show that:

• While approximately one in two people believe that gender equality has been achieved in leadership positions in the workplace and in politics in Ireland, roughly one in six believe that women do not have the necessary qualities and skills to fill positions of responsibility in politics.
• Ireland also had a smaller share of female senior ministers and senior administrators in government than the EU average, as well as a smaller percentage of women in parliament, although this share of the latter has been increasing over time.

In the private sphere, which has traditionally been treated as the domain of women, restrictive masculinities promote male dominance in the home. Some of the findings from the report show that:

• The gender gap in weekly hours of unpaid work was among the highest in the EU 28 in 2016 and the male to female ratio of weekly hours of unpaid work in 2016 was below the EU average.
• Men in Ireland recorded the lowest levels of difficulty in combining paid work with their care responsibilities in the EU, less than half the level reported by women in Ireland.

The OECD Development Centre defines restrictive masculinities as perceived notions or norms, shared by both men and women that promote inflexible expectations of how men are expected to behave in order to be considered a “real” man. The OECD highlights how these norms can be directly associated with negative consequences for women and girls. Ireland is the first country to apply the OECD model to national data to measure norms of masculinities in society. Today’s report will inform policy making in Ireland in the area of women’s empowerment and well-being and gender equality and is to be used as the basis for a webinar to be hosted by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth in early 2022.

Speaking about the report, Minister O’Gorman said:

ENDS

Although norms of restrictive masculinities are also associated with negative consequences for men and boys, as well as people from sexual and gender minorities*, the data in the OECD Report focuses on the consequences for women.

Within the public sphere, especially economic and political, the report singles out five norms that characterise restrictive masculinities and are widely accepted across cultures. A “real” man should:

• Be the breadwinner, working for pay to provide for the material needs of the household
• Be financially dominant at work and at home
• Work in “manly” jobs, those professions that society defines as “men’s work”
• Be the “ideal worker”, prioritising work over all other aspects of life
• Be a “manly” leader by cultivating an assertive and space-occupying leadership style

While the domestic sphere has traditionally been treated as the domain of women, restrictive masculinities promote male dominance in the home too. A “real” man should:

• Not do unpaid care and domestic work, considering this work as generally “women’s work”
• Have the final say in household decisions, being the one at the top of a hierarchy at home
• Control and administer household assets specifically productive assets
• Protect and exercise guardianship of family members especially women and girls within the household

The Statistical Spotlight report collates data from a number of sources to provide an overall picture of how Ireland is progressing on the 10 norms.

• The term sexual minority is an umbrella term for those individuals whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual. Gender minority is an umbrella term that encompasses transgender and gender-nonconforming people – individuals whose current gender identity or gender expression do not conform to social expectations based on their sex assigned at birth. For more information, see here.

Statistical Spotlight #6: Gender Norms in Ireland

The Statistical Spotlight Series