Irish women have the highest rate of pay in comparison to their male counterparts in the world… until they have children that is.

That’s the shocking statistic that has emerged from the OECD report ‘Closing the Gender Gap’, released on Monday. 

Ireland is listed along with Australia, Luxembourg and The Netherlands as parts of the world where childless women earn more than their male counterparts, but while the margin relating to the other three countries is 3 per cent or less, Irish women without children reportedly earn a whopping 17 per cent more than their male colleagues. In comparison Germany, the U.S. and Japan childless women earn on average between 3 per cent and 24 per cent lower wages than men.

So far so good for the Irish women, but that statistic changes completely once children are in the picture. 

The report found that once an Irish woman has children, her average earnings sink to 14 per cent less than male co-workers. 

The sobering conclusion to draw from the research is the gap between women who have children and those who don’t in this country makes ‘the cost of having children’ in Ireland one of the highest in the world, just behind Korea – where women with a family are expected to give up work. 

The OECD report also found that women who do have children are more likely to opt to work part-time in countries with high childcare costs.