Minister for Children, Disability and Equality Norma Foley has today announced new measures on gender pay gap reporting in recognition of International Women’s Day. The most notable news is the launch of a new portal reporting on gender pay gaps for 6,000 public and private sector organisations, expected to go live this autumn. In addition, the requirement to publish data concerning pay differences between men and women will be extended to all companies with over 50 employees.
Speaking about the new portal, Minister Foley, underlining the 2022 figure of 9.6%, hoped that the new gender pay gap portal “will help to raise awareness of the gender pay gap among employers and the public. […] There has been progress made since 2007 when the gender pay gap in Ireland was 17.3% but much more remains to be done. Women are capable, committed and talented contributors to the workforce. Their levels of pay should reflect this.”
This news is likely to be welcomed by activists and advocacy groups, among them product manager Jennifer Keane who is the owner of PayGap.ie, an existing web portal for gender pay gaps in Irish businesses. Ahead of this announcement, Keane spoke on 92.5 Phoenix FM’s D15 Today programme about her motivation behind creating the portal and her lived experience as a woman in often male-dominated workplaces. Having called for Government to set up its own portal, and this announcement now making good on that wish, Keane said there was precedent for how best to go about this. Citing Australia and the United Kingdom as examples of countries with similar legislation in place with portals in place, “not only can members of the public search and find the information, but companies have to submit their data to that portal. They can also make the same kind of reports that companies in Ireland are making right now, where they have the PDFs and they explain [reasons for the pay gap] but they have to submit the actual core figures to this portal.”
A plan for a Government-operated pay gap portal was in place as early as 2021 when the Gender Pay Gap Information Act was signed into law, but the previous coalition government did not commit to any timeframe for its launch. Keane says this is negatively affecting how gender pay gap data is being presented and in turn collected. “I was hopeful that that would […] be like the portal in the UK, which is a really good resource, but […] because of [the delay], companies just pick whatever format they like to report in. They miss data. Some of the data they report is incorrect. If the government were to actually deliver on a central portal, they’d be able to [set standards]. I built the first version of mine in a weekend. They’re a whole government.”
Keane has a personal motivation for shining a light on gender pay gaps having worked in the tech industry for the past 20 years, first as a coder and now a product manager. “Part of the reason I’m so interested in gender equality is [that] I have been a lot of the time the only woman in the room and I’ve experienced pay discrimination and difficulties and just gender discrimination in general. I’ve often struggled with how hard it is to be the only woman in the room, to be the only one constantly saying, ‘Is this fair?’ or ‘Are we caring about this?’ You have people kind of almost rolling their eyes like, ‘Oh, there’s Jen, off on one again’.”
Using her background in coding, she first launched her portal as a page on her own blog in 2022, “hopeful that the government would have a portal by the second year. [2023] rolled around and it became clear that they weren’t going to have a portal and I wanted to do more […] I want to show graphs. I want to let people compare. It’s going to have to be its own website. I’m a big believer in sunlight as the best disinfectant. There’s questions you can ask of the data. There’s other ways to report. There’s lots of nuance in how you interpret gender pay gap data. Ultimately, you have to publish the numbers and everyone’s legally obliged to publish their report. You can talk all you like about this initiative and that initiative and share pictures of women laughing with salad on International Women’s Day but if your report says that you have a 40% gender pay gap, then that’s pretty clear how you actually value your female employees.”
Keane also highlighted how the overall gender pay gap figure only tells part of the story, and that quartiles reveal if women are involved in more senior roles and in higher pay brackets. “Quartiles are very interesting because sometimes companies will have figures where their actual pay gap doesn’t look too bad, but you look at the quartiles and you still actually have very few women in senior leadership. Not only is that a problem for the pay gap, but also how company policies are influenced, how company decisions are influenced. If you’re not having gender equality at those highest senior levels, you’re also missing the influence. It’s not just about the pay, it’s about who’s in the room making the decisions.”
Responding to the announcement that Government is to finally launch its own gender pay gap portal, Keane welcomed the news saying she is “pleased to see that the Government will finally deliver on its commitment to have a central portal for gender pay gap reports, although it won’t be the very first time all reports have been collected somewhere to view.” She hopes data from 2022 onwards when the Act came into law will be included on the new portal. While the portal is a welcome launch, Keane also calls on Minister Foley and her Department to consider implementing some recommendations made in a policy paper of hers, “particularly those around appointing an ombudsman or a body with specific responsibilities around these reports, so that members of the public have somewhere to direct questions and seek help if reports are incorrect, late, or missing entirely.”
Keane also anticipates a more streamlined formatting of submitted data, saying that “to date, the quality of the reports published has varied significantly, and I look forward to this improving with the creation of a portal which will, by necessity, standardise the format.” She is proud of her own work via PayGap.ie “and will continue to maintain the site and data repository as a historical record of the data. I welcome the opportunity to collaborate with anyone who wants to improve their reporting in the future, or work with the data I’ve already gathered.”
Our interview with Jennifer Keane of PayGap.ie is available to listen back below.
