The famous glass ceiling is still firmly in place at the end of the 20th century where real or substantive gender equality is the current goal, SIPTU's National Women's Forum has been told.
SIPTU's national equality secretary, Ms Rosheen Callender, told the forum in Ennis, Co Clare: "There is a general realisation that formal, and even legal, equal treatment is all every well and essential but the outcome won't necessarily be real equality."
A senior lecturer in the Department of Statistics and Women's Studies at Trinity College Dublin, Ms Eileen Drew, said the Irish social welfare and taxation regimes and pension provisions had not yet adapted to women's continuing attachment to the labour market. She said 34 per cent of the State's 1,210,000 jobs in 1997 were held by women compared to 25 per cent of the 975,000 jobs in 1975.