THE DIFFERENCES between men and women are about more than who rocks the cradle, it seems.
The Central Statistics Office’s Women and Men in Ireland 2008 report, released yesterday, found women were less likely to cycle to work than men and more likely to drive. They were more likely to describe themselves as Roman Catholic, while men were more likely to have no religion. Older women were more likely than men to hold provisional driving licences.
The report found men were more likely to emigrate, while women were more likely to be immigrants here. Women were more likely to suffer from personality disorders while men were more likely to have schizophrenia or alcoholic disorders.
The report, which analysed the lives of men and women in Ireland, is the fifth in a series of gender reports produced by the CSO.
It found that Ireland had the fourth-highest proportion of female offenders convicted of crimes in Europe in 2006.
Women accounted for 19.4 per cent of criminal convictions in Ireland in that year. Female conviction rates were only higher in the UK, Denmark and Luxembourg.
However, the CSO advised caution in interpreting these figures, as the methodology for crime statistics had not generally been harmonised across the EU.
The report found that more than 60 per cent of women got to work in less than half an hour while just over 50 per cent of men achieved this feat. This could be explained by the fact that almost 62 per cent of women drove to work, while 53.5 per cent of men did so. And while just one per cent of women cycled to work, compared with 2.6 per cent of men, women were more likely to walk to work than men.
Married men worked longer hours than single men, the report found, while the majority of married women worked between 20 and 40 hours a week. The research found that the pattern of emigration had been almost identical for women and men for many years, but last year there were 10,000 more male emigrants than female.
Meanwhile, there were 43,900 female immigrants in Ireland last year, compared to 39,900 men.
The report found that Ireland had the most gender-balanced population in the EU in 2007, with 100 women per 100 men in the population. For older age groups, the proportion of women in the population was higher, with 80 men per 100 women in the 65 and over age group.
The report also found that women continued to be paid less than men and to be under-represented in decisionmaking roles. Women earned 86 per cent of men’s income in 2006 after adjustments were made for the difference in hours worked. Young men continued to leave school earlier than women, and to have a lower life expectancy.
