A new government report has revealed that mental health among females in Ireland has worsened since 2016, with the document also confirming that female net migration has increased “substantially” in recent years.
The Spotlight report, The State of the Nation’s Women and Girls, published on Monday by the Department OF Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, says that female mental health performs consistently lower than that of males and has gotten worse in the last eight years in Ireland.
Almost one-in-four 15 to 24 year-old females said they had negative mental health. The proportion of women in Ireland who believe they are in good or very good heath fell in the decade to 2022, and mental health has also worsened since 2016, according to the report.
The report also found that among women and girls aged 10-17, 47 her cent were likely to meet the national guidelines on physical activity for children compared to 62.6 per cent of boys. However, the number of women reaching the national physical activity guidelines tends to be greater for women than men, with women more likely to engage in recreational walking than men (73 per cent compared to 66 per cent).
Mental health
The report says that men reported higher positive mental health than women in each year examined, and that mental health rates have decreased among women from 2016.
Women exhibited lower levels of positive mental health than men across all age groups. The proportion of women with positive mental health remained stable between the ages of 15 and 64 at 7-8%. The highest level of positive mental health was observed for women in the 65-74 age class (9%), and the lowest in the oldest age group aged 75+ at 6%.
Overall, levels of poor mental health were lower in 2023 than in 2021 but were still higher than levels observed in 2016. According to the survey, men indicated lower levels of negative mental health than women.
The report notes: “When broken down by age, women showed poorer mental health than men in every age group except the 35-44 age group in 2023. Women aged 15-24 exhibited the highest level of negative mental health, with almost one-in-four showing a high level of psychological stress. Levels of negative mental health ranged between 12% and 16% between the ages of 25-64 for females, after which it reduced to 10% or lower.”
Hospital admissions with psychiatric causes were highest for females aged 20-24. However, the rate remained lower between the ages of 25 and 64, with the lowest rate occurring among females aged 55-64. The rate increases again among females aged 65–74-years.
Female admission rates were higher than male rates in young adulthood (18-19 years old). Between the ages of 20 and 44, male admission rates are higher than female rates. However, for all age groups above 45-54, females have higher admission rates than males.
In terms of physical health, the proportion of females reporting that they are in good or very good health has fallen from 88.1 per cent in 2011 to 82.8 per cent in 2022.
MIGRATION
The report also focused on an upward trend of female migration. Female net migration has risen substantially in recent years, from 11,500 outwards in 2011 to 38,000 inwards in 2024 – an increase of over 230 per cent. There was a sharp increase in particular between 2021 and 2023, when female net migration rose from 11,000 inwards in 2021 to 42,600 inwards in 2023.
Non-Irish females made up 15.6% of the female population in 2022, with the largest numbers from Poland, the UK and India.
The Spotlight report, the fifteenth of its kind examining statistical trends, also found that the number of rape and sexual assault offences and attempts/threats to murder, assaults, harassments, and related offences reported by women have increased from 2016 to 2023.
The report shows that in 2024, net migration amounted to 79,300 inwards, of which 47% (38,000) were female. This contrasts with net outward migration of 27,300 in 2011, of which 42% (11,500) were females and the remaining 15,800 were males.
From 2021 to 2022, female net migration increased substantially from 11.0 thousand inwards to 32.1 thousand inwards, and to a greater extent than male net migration. However, the report points out that more recently in 2024, male net migration has surpassed female net migration at 41.3 thousand compared to 38.0 thousand.
The report notes a gradual increase in the percentage of non-Irish and dual-national females from 2011 to 2022, “suggesting an increasingly diverse female population in Ireland.”
The data carried in the report shows that the female Irish-only population has fallen from 86 per cent in 2011 to 81 per cent in 2022. The percentage of non-nationals has also increased from 13.1% in 2011 to 15.6% in 2022.
The report notes that there are more males in the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS). While there were 13,860 women in the system in November last year, there were 19,925 males – 58.9 per cent were males, while 41 per cent were females (with 0.1 per cent not declaring their gender).
When it came to the gender distribution of males and females within the five largest nationality groups in IPAS accommodation, gender disparities are most substantial for Algerians, of whom just 17.7 per cent were female. Women far outnumbered men when it came to Georgians and Somalians in the IPAS system – with females making up 36 per cent and 41 per cent respectively. With regards to Nigerian migrants, the IPAS population was more gender-equal, with 52 per cent of residents being female, compated to 48 per cent being male.
The Zimbabwean population has a female majority, according to the report, with 58 per cent being female.
The report confirms that the five largest nationality groups in the IPAS system are Nigerians, followed by Georgians, Algerians, Somalians, and Zimbabwians, as of November 2024.
The government report states that among those with citizenship from the Ukraine, USA, Spain and Germany, females represent a higher proportion of the population, whereas for countries such as Croatia and Romania, males outnumber females. Those with citizenship from countries such as Poland and France have a relatively balanced gender distribution.
Poland was the country with the largest number of female citizens in Ireland by gender, followed by the United Kingdom, India, Romania, and Lithuania, according to data from the Central Statistics Office. Ukraine was 15th in a list of countries when it came to the number of female citizens living in Irealnd.
While the report said that mortality rates for females have decreased amongst most causes of death, the report noted that mortality rates have “increased somewhat for mental and behavioural disorders”, rising from 59.5 per 100,000 deaths in 2015 to 61.9 per 100,000 deaths in 2022.
Maternal health and fertility rates
The report notes that the total number of births in Ireland from 2011 to 2022 decreased by 26.4% from 74,033 to 54,483. The birth rate fell from 16.2 births per thousand population in 2011 to 10.5 in 2022. Further, the average age of mothers at maternity rose from 31.8 years to 33.2 years between 2011 and 2022.
The report notes that this reflects a trend towards later motherhood in the Irish population. Meanwhile, the proportion of births inside marriage has also declined over the period, “reflecting changing societal norms.”
The fertility rate has consistently fallen – from 2.0 in 2011, to 1.8 in 2016, to 1.5 in 2022, with a brief uptick in 2021. This could spell demographic gloom because a total fertility rate of 2.1 is generally considered the replacement level, meaning that each woman would have to have an average of 2.1 children for the population to remain stable over time.
Babies born inside of marriage made up 66.1 per cent of births back in 2011, falling to 63.4 per cent in 2016, to 57.1 per cent in 2022.
Crime
The data indicates that men are more frequently victims of homicide than women with 43 male victims and 21 female victims in 2023. This is the case for both murder/ manslaughter and dangerous driving leading to death. However, when it comes to rape and sexual assault, women are overwhelmingly the majority of victims, with 2,333 female victims compared to 551 male victims.
The report says that harassment and related offenses were similarly more frequently committed against women than men with 1,291 female victims and 607 male victims in 2023. However, for assaults males are the more common victims (11,848 compared to 7,783).
Education
With regards to education, there was a substantial increase in the percentage of women attaining third level education, rising from below 37.6% in 2011 to 50.4% in 2023. The percentage of women with at most a Leaving Certificate level of education did see a slight decline from 36.1 per cent to 34.5 per cent.
The data shows that females are less likely than males to have no formal education, only a primary education level, or only a lower secondary education level. The share of the population with an upper secondary level of education was similar for males and females (16.4 per cent and 16.9 per cent respectively).
At third level, 8% of females have ordinary bachelor’s degrees, and 13% have honours bachelor’s degrees. A further 12 per cent of females are educated to postgraduate level. At all three of these education levels, the proportion of females is higher than males.
However, the report says that males have greater representation than females in advanced certificates or apprenticeships.
The report also notes the “clear gender differences” between the subject choices of girls and boys at Leaving Cert level. For 2023, girls had a higher representation than males in Home Economics, for which 84.7% of students are female. Art and Music are the subjects with the next highest proportion of females, at 70.5% and 68.2%, respectively.
Females also outnumbered males in French, Spanish and German, but the gender breakdown was more equal for the compulsory subjects such as English, Mathematics, and Irish. For maths and technical subjects, females were “substantially underrepresented,” the report claims. It states that girls accounted for just 9.4% of the students taking Engineering Science, and 15.0% of those taking Construction Studies. In Applied Mathematics, and Physics, females made up less than one third of students. For Computer Science, the proportion of females was 20.6%.
With regards to the workplace, while female unemployment rates have historically been much lower than unemployment rates for males, over the period 2011-2024 female unemployment rates overtook male rates on several occasions, (in 2018, 2020, and during 2022-2024).
The report states that female earnings have risen weekly from €471.94 to €623.22, representing a wage growth of 32.1 per cent between 2011 and 2023.
Authors add that women with a primary level or lower secondary level earn on average 6.4 per cent less than males with the same education level. For females with an upper secondary level of education, the gap widens to 7.7 per cent. In the third-level group, females earn a median of €37,004 as compared with male earnings of €39,460, representing a pay gap of 6.6%.
The report shows that the gender pay gap is narrowing, both in Ireland and in the EU. In 2022, the gender pay gap in Ireland was 9.3 per cent, whilst in the EU, the figure was 12.7 per cent – putting Ireland below the average of the 27 EU member states for five years running.
Females in government
The report notes that female representation in government in Ireland is below the EU average. Ireland was 6 percentage points below the EU average of 35 per cent, and was closest to the EU average in 2016. However, there has been an increase in female representation in government, up from 20 per cent in 2011 to 29 per cent in 2023.
Rise in homelessness
Homelessness is an issue for both male and females on the rise in Ireland. Citing census data from 2016 and 2022, the number of women homeless increased by 42 per cent from 2016 to 2022, while the number of males that were homeless increased by a higher 55 per cent. The largest increase in homelessness was seen in girls aged 10 to 15, which increased by 87.4% for females and 101.6% for males. Meanwhile, there was a large proportional reduction in the number of females that are homeless over the age of 75.
“There are greater numbers experiencing homelessness, and there are a large number of women and girls now in Ireland who had to flee their own countries under international protection and temporary protection. There are also a higher number of female victims of rape and sexual assault offences and attempts/threats to murder, assaults harassments and related offences, though this may be due to increased disclosure and willingness to report such crimes,” the Department said.
However, the government pointed out some benefits highlighted in the report, noting that:
“Overall, in the past decade, women and girls are faring better in relation to many aspects of their lives. In terms of health, female life expectancy has risen, female mortality rates across most causes of death have decreased, both girls and women are more active, and hospital admissions for psychiatric causes are down. In relation to education, attainment of third level qualifications among females has risen substantially, while those whose highest education level is junior certificate or lower has reduced. There are also more young girls registered for early care and education (ECCE), and the number of early school leavers has reduced considerably.”