Background to the Research

• In many respects, the unequal position of women in society in the North and South of Ireland is taken as being natural and desirable. Alternative accounts of the subordination of women in Ireland argue that inequalities can be accounted for in the patriarchal structure of each society, which assumes that family/society is based on male breadwinners and financially dependent wives.
  

Research Approach

• The authors, through the use of official statistics and data drawn from the Census of Population and Labour Force Surveys, argue that the position of women in employment in each region occurs in a social structure based on a male breadwinner model.
  

Main Findings

Women's Participation in the Labour Force, North and South

• In the South in 1926, 30% of women were economically active, this remained steady until the 1980s when it began to rise. By 1991 33.4% of women were economically active and by 1996 the figure had risen to 38.5%.
• In the North in 1926, 36% of women were economically active, the increase in women working outside the home began earlier than in the South and by 1981, 42% were economically active rising to 45% by 1991.

Married Women

• In the South in 1926, 6% of women were economically active compared to 15% of women in the North. By 1971, 29% of married women in the North were working outside the home, whereas the figure in the South remained stable, reaching only 7.5% by the same year.
• By 1981, just under 17% of women in the South were economically active, this had increased dramatically to 37% by 1996. In the North the dramatic rise occurred in the 1970s and by 1981 41% of married women worked, this reached 49% by 1991 and 56% of married/cohabiting women worked by 1995.

Age

• In 1996, 63% of married women working were between the ages of 25-34 years and 25% were between the ages of 55-59. Nearly the same proportion of women aged between 20-34 worked in the North but 42% of those in employment in the North were aged between 55-59 years.

Pay

• The Equal Pay Act was introduced in the North in 1970 and in the South in 1975. In the North, women were earning 63% of male wage rates in 1973 and 75% in 1980; across all occupations and at all levels. In the South, in manufacturing jobs, women earned just under 60% of male wage rates in 1973 and 69% by 1980. The differential has remained fairly constant over time.

Part-time Work

• In the North, the proportion of female part-time work is lower than in the rest of the UK, 37% versus 45% in 1993, but is much higher than in the South, the figure for which was 19% in the same year.
• In the South, part-time work grew rapidly in the mid-1980s rising from 6% in 1988 to 11% in 1994 - most of this growth occurred in the service sector.
• In the North, the rise in part-time work happened earlier and accounted for a greater proportion of employment growth; female part-time employment growth between 1971-92 accounted for 95% of the net gain in female employment, much of this occurred in the expanding public sector.

Occupational Segregation

• Textile and clothing manufacturing employed 80% of working women in the 1940s. When these industries declined, women's employment shifted to the service sector. It can be noted that employment data from neither region includes farm-work which accounts for a sizeable amount of female employment in the North and a great deal of female employment on the South.
• In the South in 1996, 70% of women were employed in clerical, professional/ technical and service occupations. 26% of women in the North are employed in managerial/administration posts compared to 33% in the UK.

Child-care/Benefit System

• In the North and the South, men have low levels of involvement in housework and child-care. State provision of child-care is low in both regions, until recently the North had the lowest level of child-care provision in the UK and provision in the South is minimal.
• In both regions, the benefit systems are premised on the principle of a male breadwinner. In both systems women are treated as dependants of their partners. In a means-tested system women are discouraged from taking employment as benefits are lost. In the South, before the EU directive on equal treatment, women received lower benefit rates for a shorter period of time than men.
• In the North, separate taxation for husbands and wives is universal and automatic, whilst in the South double tax allowances and double tax bands are allocated to a married couple, whether the wife works or not. This discourages women from joining the labour market.

Educational Attainment

• In both regions, the level of educational attainment amongst women has grown since the 1960s. In the South, 67% of women aged 25-29 years completed second-level education compared with 33% of women aged 50-59 years.

Labour Market Demands

• Women in both regions were subject to a marriage bar - where women in the public sector had to leave work when they married. The marriage bar was lifted in the South in 1957 for primary school teachers, and in 1973 for other public employees. The marriage bar remained in the North until the early 1970s (despite being removed in Britain in 1946).
• Reintegration into the labour market is made more difficult in the South as the state was more active in it's attempts to exclude women from employment. Women on the whole have been economically inactive for long periods and are not entitled to unemployment benefits, therefore they are not officially registered as unemployed and seeking work. Employment and training courses mainly draw their recruits from the official register of the unemployed and focus on men rather than women.

Industrial Policy

• In the South, state directed industrial policy contributed to the low levels of female employment from the 1920s to the mid-1980s. In both regions, male unemployment was seen as the major problem. In both regions the expansion of public sector employment boosted the demand for female employees, especially in the health and welfare sectors. In the North, the public sector accounted for most of the part-time employment growth during the 1970s and 1980s, whilst state policy in the South affirmed full-time work as the norm.

Equality Policy

• In the North, the Equal Pay Act (1970), the Fair Employment Act (1976), the Sex Discrimination (NI) Order (1976) and the establishment of the Fair Employment Agency (1976) and the Equal Opportunity Commission (1976) and various equal opportunity directives can be seen as part of the move to equal citizenship. However, in the North, legislation associated with religious discrimination has been stronger in it's content and enforcement than equality policy focused on gender.
• The South introduced similar legislation in the form of the Anti-Discrimination (1974) and Employment Equality Act (1977), and the setting up of the Employment Equality Agency (1977) and the Employment Equality and Equal Status Acts (1997). Important parts of these pieces of legislation are ambiguous and leave some forms of discrimination open to interpretation.

Conclusions

• When comparing women's paid employment in the North and South, the most striking feature is the higher proportion of married women in paid employment in the North. A higher proportion of women work in part-time jobs in the North and a greater proportion are in low paid work.
• The context of women's work in the North fits firmly into the 'modified male breadwinner model' of state social policy - women are economically dependent on a husband. There is low level child-care provision, individual taxation, means-tested benefits and deregulated employment policy.
• Women's employment in the South fits into the 'male breadwinner model'; there have been more systematic attempts to exclude women from the labour market and to prevent women from re-entering the labour market. There is low level child-care provision, a non-individualised tax system, means-tested benefits and employment policy focused on the creation of full-time, predominantly male, employment.
• Young women in both regions show high levels of participation in the workforce, most of these women work in the service sector. State educational policy in the South (coupled with women's high attainment levels) and the expansion of middle-class service occupations means that nearly two-thirds of those in professional services are women.
• In the North, the proportion of women in professional services is lower, reflecting their lower educational levels. Women in the North represent a higher proportion of those in administrative/managerial positions than in the South. This may be the result of more stringent equality opportunity monitoring in the North.
• Equal Opportunity legislation was introduced in the North and South from the 1970s onwards. However, the extent of the commitment to gender equality can be called into question in both regions. This is particularly the case when gender equality issues clash with policies in other areas which follow the male breadwinner model. Also, in areas of employment where trade union activity is weak or lacks focus on gender issues, it is difficult to challenge employment practices and processes which perpetuate discrimination.
• It is the case for both regions that explanations of women's employment that focus on the individual choices of women ignore the structural parameters in which such choices are made. Individual choice explanations also ignore low pay, the predominance of men in powerful public positions and the patriarchal nature of society - North and South.