A new study from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has found that Ireland has Europe’s largest gender gap in advanced digital skills use at work.<\/p>\n
According to the research, 44% of men in Ireland use advanced digital skills in their jobs, compared with just 18% of women.<\/p>\n
This represents a 26-percentage-point gap, almost double the European average.<\/p>\n
The report, which is being launched to coincide with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, is part of the ESRI\u2013Block W Joint Research Programme.<\/p>\n
The digital skills used by workers range from basic tasks like internet use, to more advanced operations such as programming and using AI tools.<\/p>\n
The research found that while gender gaps in advanced digital work are evident across Europe, Ireland stands out as having the largest gap.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s large gap arises because men in Ireland are much more likely than men in other European countries to use advanced digital skills at work.<\/p>\n
The report shows that women are under-represented in the most digitally intensive jobs.<\/p>\n
Researchers also found that women are less likely than men to use advanced digital skills, even when comparing workers with similar levels and fields of education, occupations, and sectors.<\/p>\n
“In Ireland, women and men tend to work in different jobs and sectors, particularly in tech-intensive roles, which explains some of the difference in digital skill use,” according to the ESRI.<\/p>\n
“However, a substantial share of the gender gap remains unexplained after accounting for education, occupation, and sector,” the report found.<\/p>\n
The study concludes that further research is needed to better understand the role of workplace organisation, including how digital tasks, responsibilities, and progression opportunities are allocated within firms.<\/p>\n
“These gender gaps persist even among women and men with similar education levels, fields of study and occupations,” said Dr Adele Whelan, Senior Research Officer at the ESRI.<\/p>\n
“This indicates that encouraging women into STEM education and occupations, while essential, will not on its own close the divide.”<\/p>\n
“Women are under-represented in the most digitally intensive roles, pointing to a potential ‘digital glass ceiling\u2019 within workplaces,” Dr Whelan said.<\/p>\n
Professor Joyce O’Connor, Co-Founder and Chair of Block W said competitiveness, innovation and resilience depend not only on investment and infrastructure, but on what happens inside workplaces.<\/p>\n
“In an economy facing skills shortages, failing to fully utilise women\u2019s advanced digital capability is an avoidable constraint on growth,” Professor O’Connor said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new study from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has found that Ireland has Europe’s largest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-291555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}