A friend of mine who has been struggling with infertility for many years recently told me she was pregnant. I am overjoyed for her. But when I last spoke to her, she talked about work and said she was worried: “I’ve been waiting so long, I don’t want to put this little one into a creche or have someone else care for him or her.”

I could see the anxiety amid her joy. The cost of living means she may have to continue working outside the home, but she doesn’t want to.

It’s not an uncommon theme. There is a trend of younger women on social media posting about dissatisfaction with their life choices. They complain about workplace burnout, when what they really want is to be married, to look after their own home, take care of their children and be taken care of by a husband. Singer Raye tapped into this zeitgeist with the release of her hit “Where Is My Husband!” last September.

Only a few weeks ago, a viral clip on TikTok showed a woman, who her friend says, “doesn’t want kids”, holding a baby for the first time. She is overcome with emotion, crying, smiling, laughing, crying again as she gazes at the newborn, saying, “Oh my God … I need to have a kid … I want to take my top off and have skin to skin contact.” Women’s desire for children is real, but we are constantly instructed to subordinate it to career advancement – even amid a demographic crisis.

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Last month’s PwC Women in Work Index states that the Republic has “performed well” compared to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. By this, they mean that the so-called “gender pay gap” has narrowed here.

The “gender pay gap” is a made-up, completely pointless, and downright misleading datum. It is supposed to highlight disparities between what women are paid and what men are paid. In reality, it ignores the fact that it has been illegal since 1975 to pay women and men a different wage for the same job. The ludicrous Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021 requires employers to report on matters such as “the difference between the mean hourly remuneration of employees of the male gender and that of employees of the female gender” and, if there is a discrepancy, to explain what is being done to fix it.

What the statistics will not tell you is what positions are being filled by men and which by women.

The gender pay gap not only fails to reveal but also disguises the fact that women and men are not doing the same jobs and are not working the same hours. In general, men work longer hours and take fewer career breaks than women, more of whom work part-time. The 2021 Act sees this as a problem to be fixed, not as an expression of preference by women who can be trusted to decide for themselves what is best for them and their families.

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This has been called the “mommy problem”. What it really means is that women – like me – often decide when they have children to either give up working outside the home, cut down their hours in the workplace, or choose a different job or profession that is more family-friendly. These decisions have consequences for what a woman earns. Put simply, if you are working fewer hours than your male peers, or are not working at all, you will not earn as much as a man.

The PwC report references this year’s OECD report, which “highlights that gender disparities in the labour market are narrowing, with women across OECD countries returning to work in greater numbers driven by cost-of-living pressures” (my emphasis). In other words, the gap between what women earn and what men earn is narrowing because more women are being forced into the workplace.

The powers-that-be hail this as progress, while the girls on TikTok and Instagram are crying, mourning the life that they might have had as wives and mothers, while looking with envy at “tradwife” Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm, who recently visited Ballymaloe Cookery School, and has 10.4 million followers on Instagram.

But whatever about social media stories and girls and women fantasising about idealised and romanticised visions of domestic bliss, what about my friend’s reaction? What about the professional Irish women who, when their household income allows it, quit work to look after their children? These are intelligent, accomplished women who are not lacking in ambition or ability, but feel the pull, just as I did, to be there for their children’s sakes and for their own. They know how short childhood is and that a job can always be taken up again later in life; a childhood cannot be revisited.

How unfair and wrong it is that women who would like to be there to look after their children feel the need to work “driven by cost-of-living pressures”. Should it only be the children of wealthy women who get to enjoy the company of their mothers while they are young?

How conveniently our Government has forgotten the overwhelming rejection of the disastrous 2024 referendum that sought to erase the words “woman”, “mother” and “home” from the Constitution. Bunreacht na hÉireann still states that mothers should not be obliged out of economic necessity to work outside the home. When will that pledge be honoured?

© The Irish Times