Ireland's gender pay gap legislation was signed into law on July 13 last year.
The Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021 will make it obligatory for every state body and companies with more than 250 employees to publish details of the gender pay gap in their organisations.
The requirement is expected to come into force later this year.
We asked two employment experts if the gender pay gap could be described as a form of sexism.
Professor Christine Cross, who lectures in Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at the Kemmy Business School at University of Limerick, said yes.
"The straight answer to this is yes."
Maeve McElwee, Ibec Director of Employer Relations, said no.
"No, the gender pay gap is not a form of sexism. The issue of the gender pay gap is much deeper and more complex than just workplace policies and pay structures."
Sexism
Sexism is linked to beliefs around the roles women should play in society and as such attitudes around women's place in society are important drivers of individual attitudes about women in the workplace.
Gender pay gap
Equal pay is where a man and a woman earn the same pay for the same job.
The gender pay gap is a broader measure of the difference in the average gross hourly earnings of male and female paid employees, as a percentage of the average gross hourly earnings of male paid employees.
It is usually measured across the economy as a whole or an entire industry or occupation and is expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings.
The gender pay gap in Ireland is currently around 14%. It means Irish women earn around 85 cent for every euro earned by an Irish man.
"Men and women tend to work in different sectors of the economy and in different jobs," Prof Cross explained.
"In sectors where women tend to dominate, such as healthcare, education and public administration, these sectors have traditionally been seen as having lower value and consequently are lower paid.
"Essentially the fields where women dominate tend to pay less than those where men dominate such as engineering, science and computing," she said.
Ibec's Maeve McElwee agrees. She said women are disproportionately under-represented in highly paid sectors.
The roots of this lie in the traditional gender roles in society and the different educational and career choices of men and women.
"Girls only schools sometimes fail to offer 'gendered' subjects such as mechanical drawing, while all boys schools may not offer home economics. Either may have timetables drawn up which pitch these subjects against each other. Where subjects required for specific jobs are not available, career decisions are narrowed at an early stage," Ms McElwee said.
As a result, while girls tend to outperform boys in education, they are less likely to choose subjects that lead to higher earnings in later life, she said.
"This occupational segregation exacerbates the gender pay gap. Significant interventions are required in the education system and teacher training curricula to address subject availability, subject and career choice, and gender stereotyping and role modelling."
Another reason for the existence of the gender pay gap is that women encounter greater obstacles when balancing home and work life.
Family care and domestic responsibilities are not equally shared.
Prof Cross gives the example of parental leave, which is largely taken up by women.
"The consequence of this is that women have more career interruptions or work shorter hours than men, which has a negative impact on their promotion prospects and hence their salaries and bonuses.
"So yes I believe that the gender pay gap is an outcome of sexism in the workplace."
Ms McElwee said employers need to examine their organisational culture for unconscious biases and take corrective and preventative action to address their impact.
"This may include the provision of unconscious bias training, ensuring recruitment and promotion processes are transparent and equitable and encouraging the balanced uptake of protective leave by both males and females," she said.
She added that a strong and coherent but broader public policy approach is what will really drive greater workplace gender balance.
