Taoiseach Leo Varadkar wants to allow Irish politicians to take a care off for parental leave, and potentially to job share, as is increasingly common in business. “To do so in Ireland would require a modification of the electoral system but is perhaps something I think we could consider; something that I think would be of benefit to women and to men and to broader society,” he said.

Speaking about casting women in traditionally male roles like Hamlet, actress Maxine Peake says, “It’s really, really important. It’s about empowerment. I think: hang on a minute, this is a bloke that wrote plays that were all performed by men, so this is a female perspective."

A third of companies (34 per cent) said they feared their gender pay gap was worse than Ireland’s average gap. Based on gross hourly earnings, this stood at 13.9 per cent in 2014, according to a European Commission report. Half of the 67 major companies, which employ more than 110,000 people between them, also said they were concerned about the potential cost of closing the gender pay gap. Despite these fears, three-quarters (74 per cent) said they broadly supported the principle of gender pay gap reporting. Two-thirds think it will have a positive impact.

“We need to be having a different conversation – not looking at the merits or otherwise of single-sex versus co-education in tacking mental health and social issues but a conversation about how all schools can help students to find a vocabulary and language to describe their feelings and worries.”

Muireann McQuillan (19), a clinical speech and language student at Trinity College Dublin, said “we’ve never had a female taoiseach so that’s not good”. “I think it’s important to have a female leader because young girls growing up might be more inclined to go into politics. If you’re not seeing it, you’ll feel like there’s a glass ceiling before you even have tried. I think that’s really discouraging.”

Many of the initiatives to try to attract and retain female staff have been launched in the past few years and some private equity firms have only recently started to track the proportion of women in the workforce.Pressure is growing on employers in the financial services industry to hire more women and reduce the pay gap between male and female workers, as investors seek more diversity of views in the hope that this will boost returns.

One of the most significant developments of the last century, the centenary of which will be commemorated next year, was the Representation of the People Act (RPA). It widened the franchise, extending the vote to men of 21 and granting it to women for the first time, but only those women aged over 30 who were either themselves homeowners or else married to householders. From 1918, women were also permitted to stand for election to parliament. As a result of the RPA the Irish electorate increased dramatically from 698,000 to 1,931,000. Richard Sinnott has highlighted the historic significance of this; the 1884 Reform Act had widened the electorate from 8 to 31 per cent of the population aged 20 and over, but now the proportion was increased to 75 per cent.

Cornell University researchers concocted fake resumes for equally qualified men and women, with and without children. They found mothers were not just a lot less likely to be hired than childless women, they could also expect $11,000 less in an average starting salary. Yet fathers were likely to be offered $6,000 more than non-fathers, who were thought less committed to their jobs than dads.