Gender gaps in education in Ireland

Irish women are highly educated. More young women than men have third-level qualifications. The gap shows up in what people study and train in, and those choices can lead to very different jobs and pay later on.

Key facts

• 66.3% and 59.0%: the shares of women and men aged 25 to 34 with a third-level qualification in 2023 (CSO).
• 29.0 and 50.9: female and male STEM graduates per 1,000 people aged 20 to 29 in 2022. That 21.9-point difference was the largest in the EU27 (CSO).
• 59 of 4,056: the number of women among those who received craft apprenticeship certificates in 2025, or about 1.5% (Irish Times, reporting Department of Further and Higher Education figures).
• 129 to 226: the rise in women entering craft apprenticeships between 2021 and 2025, according to the same figures. It is a small base, but it is growing.

Why it matters

Having more qualifications has not closed the pay gap. Differences in what men and women study feed into which jobs they enter, including better-paid technical and skilled trades where women remain few. Choices are also made within a wider context of school subjects, role models and expectations about who belongs in which field, so they shouldn’t simply be read as personal preference.

Where to find out more

• Women in Technology and Science Ireland: a network supporting women in STEM
• I Wish: encouraging girls and young women into STEM
• Apprenticeship.ie: official information on apprenticeships
• Engineers Ireland: the professional body, with resources on women in engineering
• CSO Women and Men in Ireland: official statistics on gender in Ireland
• National Women’s Council: Ireland’s national women’s membership organisation

Figures checked October 2026. Each figure gives its year, and newer data may since have been published.