A chara, – The headline in your education section (September 27th) proclaims "Primary teachers disproportionately white, Irish and Catholic". The immediately obvious missing adjective from that list is female. Perhaps some do not deem gender inequality to be a problem, whereas ethnicity, nationality and religion are.
However, I would wager that it would be difficult to find a primary school in the state where women are outnumbered by men. This is borne out by the Central Statistics Office finding that in 2015 women accounted for 87 per cent of teachers at primary level. If there is a serious problem in primary schools relating to diversity among the teaching staff, then why would the issue of gender be ignored?
Can it be that gender quotas are only required when women are in the minority? – Is mise,
JOHN KELLY
Bennekerry,
Co Carlow.