Irishwomen to dominate top professions in five years

Women will make up the majority of business, financial and legal professionals by 2012, according to a new report which also forecasts that more than two out of five managers throughout the whole workforce will be women by that time, says this story by Laura Slattery in The Irish Times.

The study published by Fás and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says women will continue to acquire educational qualifications at a faster rate than men and will increase their share of employment in professional and managerial occupations faster than they will in other job areas, the story says.

One exception to the trend is that the proportion of women entering science and engineering professions is not expected to change.

The ESRI's forecasts, which are based on 860 job categories across 20 sectors, predict that the participation of women in the workforce will increase from 41.8 per cent in 2005 to more than 44 per cent by 2012.

About 44 per cent of managers will be female by this time.

But ESRI economist Dr Pete Lunn, one of the authors of the report, said the increasing proportion of women in managerial roles "doesn't necessarily mean that women will be smashing through the glass ceiling in the boardroom".

From a female perspective, the Irish report seems to take a more optimistic viewpoint an OECD forecast earlier this year.