Background to the Research

• In October 1996, a conference "Working Towards Equality in the 21st Century" was held in Belfast. At this conference the Commission presented data on women's and men's experience of employment, pay, public life and education in NI.
  

Research Approach

• This report expanded and updated the conference data, which was drawn from official statistics in order to give a fuller picture over time.
  

Main Findings

Equality in Employment

• Between 1971 and 1991, the proportion of women participating in the labour market increased from 43.3% to 56%. Most of the growth was in part-time employment. Women's increased share of employment is a result of declining levels of male employment, combined with an increase in women's employment.
• Occupational segregation persists in the NI labour market with the 'caring' occupations such as cleaning, nursing and teaching remaining predominantly female. There has been a substantial increase in the proportion of women working in some professions, such as medicine, law and local government management.
• Women continue to earn less than men across all industrial and occupational groups, with women's weekly pay being only 76% of male earnings in 1996. This persists even in those sectors where women predominate, such as banking and financial services, health and social work, and other personal services where women's pay is less than 70% of men's.

Equality in Participation in Public Life

• In 1981, there were 384 women members of public bodies (14% of total membership); this now stands at 33%. In 1996, 13% of all bodies had no female representation.
• At present there are no female MPs or MEPs representing NI constituencies.
• At local level women play a role as elected representatives, with women's representation as councillors increased slightly since the 1977 elections from 8% to 12% after the 1993 elections.

Equality in Education

• The last 20 years have seen significant changes for females in education; there is greater participation, less gender segregation in subject choice and girls are now outperforming boys in some areas.
• Girls now outperform boys in the majority of subjects at GCSE Level including the science subjects; at A Level girls have a slight edge over boys in relation to pass rates.
• Gender segregation in subject choice at GCSE Level has decreased significantly but still persists to a much greater degree at A Level.
• From 1975/76 to 1995/6 the number of female full-time undergraduate students increased from 2,677 to 13,402, with women now having more undergraduate places than men. Women have increased their share of post-graduate places from 34% in 1975/6 to 50% in 1995/6.
• Gender segregation in university subjects has improved, with more than half of social studies, business and financial students being women in 1995/6 compared with only 35% in 1975/6. Nearly half of medicine and dentistry students and more than three quarters of those studying subjects allied to medicine in 1995/6 are women.