Accenture’s Dr Michelle Cullen thinks Ireland is in the dark ages when it comes to women at work, though it didn’t used to be this way.

Ireland was liberal and then it wasn’t. It sounds simplistic, but Dr Michelle Cullen, a managing director, and diversity and inclusion lead at Accenture Ireland, knows the score.

Speaking at Inspirefest in Dublin this summer, Cullen pointed out that Ireland got off to a great start with the 1916 Proclamation, a “radical endorsement of equal rights” that treated men and women as equals.

However, things went a bit downhill from there. Cullen went on to list off a plethora of statistics showing just how unbalanced various industries are in our seemingly modern world.

“Women make up over half of the world’s population and yet, in Ireland today, men make up 78pc of Parliament,” she said.

“Who would sign up to this in the 21st century?”

Words by Gordon Hunt