WOMEN in Dublin Corporation are more poorly paid than men and concentrated in low skill jobs indoors. These are among the major findings of an equality audit, the first of its kind to be carried out in the Republic in the public sector.
The inequality shown in the audit is in spite of the fact that Dublin Corporation is one of the State's more progressive local authority employers. It co-operated fully with the Employment Equality Agency (EEA) in carrying out the audit, which is called Quality Through Equality in Dublin Corporation and was funded through the European Social Fund.
The Dublin city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, said at the launch of the document yesterday it would help the corporation develop a "model of best practice" and a blueprint for similar public bodies. The IMPACT general secretary, Mr Peter McLoone, said the audit was an example of what could be achieved for staff and service users when unions and management work together.
The EEA chief executive, Ms Carmel Foley, congratulated the corporation and its staff "for facing up to the challenges of this equality project. By introducing equality measures, the corporation is investing in its workers and this will pay dividends in fulfilling its business objectives. The corporation is also showing other local authorities the way to proceed".
Superficially, female employees appear to fare quite well in the audit. They comprise 42 per cent of the officer grade and only 8 per cent of the employee grades.
However, the majority of women are concentrated in just three departments housing, finance and libraries. The officer/employee division is also deceptive. Many manual staff are much more highly paid than the clerical/administrative grades, where women are concentrated.
If salary levels are used as, criteria, the audit shows that 87 per cent of female officers earn less than £20,000 a year, compared with 58 per cent of men. In the £20,000 to £25,000 pay bracket, there are two men for every woman and women form only 10 per cent of officers earning between £25,000 and £30,000. In the £30,000 plus a year bracket there are 150 men and 11 women.
Turning to the manual grades, there are two women and 758 men in the trades/ crafts area. One woman is an electrician and the other a building charge hand. The only area where women outnumber men is cleaning, where there are 137 women and three men.
The audit finds that "women are barely represented at all in the professional/technical area of Dublin Corporation". Nevertheless, the corporation is one of the better local authorities in this area 10 of the State's 29 local authorities have no female representation at all.
Women form over 25 per cent of professional/technical staff in just four grades assistant planner, assistant architect, assistant fire prevention officer and executive planner. The number of women in these grades "does not appear to correlate with the pool of graduates available over the years", says the audit. But it acknowledges that the public sector recruitment embargo has helped minimise recruitment.
One of the most significant obstacles to change appears to be attitudes within the workforce. Almost half of all male employees and almost a third of women employees felt that there were some jobs only suited to one sex.
The audit also found that only 38 per cent of women applied for promotion, compared with 44 per cent of men. The most common reason for not applying was the lack of promotional opportunities.