The gender pay gap is always a tricky issue to discuss. Many people argue that it’s a myth, that women and men are paid equally because it’s illegal to do otherwise, or that women earn less because of the jobs they choose.

Working in tech has shown me that, while it's not legal to pay women less for the same work, this doesn’t prevent it from happening. I believe there are times in my own employment history where I’ve been affected by unconscious bias, impacting my pay and ability to climb the ladder. 

I wasn’t choosing a lower-paid role, I just wasn’t offered the same opportunities for progression that my male colleagues were, or even asked if I was interested. This is my personal experience, but I’m not alone — the data backs it up.

For years, the UK Twitter pay gap bot tweeted gender pay gaps in response to International Women’s Day posts. That account got its data from the UK Government’s official gender pay gap portal, and I was eagerly awaiting a moment when the same could be done for Irish companies.

In 2022, that moment finally arrived as the first gender pay gap reports in Ireland were published, but with one very large problem — our government hadn’t built a central reporting tool. Far from the tidy downloadable data available elsewhere, the first year of our reports was a mish-mash of PDFs, Excel files, and Word documents buried on individual company websites.

Undeterred, I gathered as much information as I could find and embarked on a personal project that has grown into PayGap.ie — my unofficial central portal for all of the gender pay gap reports published to date.

The largest time investment involves actually gathering the data. The government didn’t provide any template for reporting, so companies publish everything from a single page with just the data to 40-page reports full of photos of smiling women. Because of this, the only way to provide the data on PayGap.ie is to be the person who reads every report, one by one.

If you’re wondering why I would bother reading every report, it’s because I truly believe sunlight is the best disinfectant — you can post an #IWD picture each year, but your report will still show you pay men over 46% more than you pay women (Goodbody Stockbrokers). Publishing the numbers demonstrates there is still a significant gender pay gap in Ireland.

The financial, legal and tech industries have some of the largest gender pay gaps, with familiar names like Intel (33.3%), Amazon (17.3%), and Microsoft (14%) all coming in above the EU average gap of 12.7%. 

Banking isn't much better, with gaps of 20.1% for Bank of Ireland or 29% for Barclays Bank, for example.

It’s not all bad news though, as some companies have taken action and really improved since publishing their first reports. Axa Insurance has gone from an 8.8% median gap to essentially equal pay (-3%) because of changes made after their its first report, the only insurance company to have closed this gap so significantly. 

Retailers fare much better — Dunnes Stores, Penneys, H&M, Decathlon, and Brown Thomas have reported effectively equal pay (a 1% or less gap) for 2024.

Gathering the data is challenging. Although there was clear guidance provided about what figures companies had to include, some continually get it wrong. Companies are supposed to include quartiles in their report, which show the balance of male and female employees at different pay levels in the company. This would be a great way to see if companies have female senior leaders… if companies reported them correctly.

Many companies — including publicly funded bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Dublin Bus and the Health and Safety Authority — report these incorrectly, on a continual basis. 

Other companies omit them entirely — Horse Racing Ireland has never included quartiles in its reports, and they were also missing from other household names like the Health Products Regulatory Authority, Peter Mark and The Barry Group — the list goes on.

Even where companies have included all of the information in their reports, I wonder if anyone checked the reports were actually readable. Coillte produces visually appealing reports, but with graphs that are two similar shades of green it’s very hard to understand which bar is which. 

Cork City Council’s chosen shades of red and brown would pose a difficulty for anyone with colour blindness. Companies share data in unlabelled graphs, or small, blurry images that range from difficult to read (Department of Tourism, Cadence, ComReg) to nearly incomprehensible (Royal Victoria Eye & Ear).

I took on the task of building a portal and deciphering these confusing reports because I was frustrated  the legislation felt half-implemented. 

Companies putting reports on their website is only marginally better than nothing. Being able to compare the data is what actually makes it useful — it’s what allows you to see if a company improves every year or how it measures up to others in the same industry. 

Without some sort of central portal, companies might as well have printed their reports out and put them right into a shredder.

Having a central portal is a great step forward, and I believe there’s an opportunity for equality minister Norma Foley to learn from my experience in curating the first few years of data, solve some of the issues I’ve seen, and ultimately make the whole endeavour really worthwhile. 

• See paygap.ie to find out how your employer fares. Jen Keane is a developer and product manager