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Irish women workers earn on average 17.1% less than their male counterparts according to a survey by the EU Commission.

The figure is almost exactly the EU average pay gap between men and women which is 17% across all the member states. The state with the largest pay gap is Germany where there is a 23.2% gap while Italy has the narrowest gap at 5.5%. The UK is above the European average with a pay gap between men and women of 20.4%.

The survey cites a number of different reasons for as to why men are paid on average more than women. The lack of women in senior and leadership positions is one of the main issues with women representing a third of managers across the EU and make up only 12% of board members on the biggest publicly-listed companies.

Women's skills are often undervalued according to the survey which notes that physical tasks, which tend to be carried out by men, are often valued more favourably than those carried out by women.

Women also work on average shorter hours than man, in large part due to child care, with 31.5% of employed women working part-time compared to just 8.5% of men.