Nearly 6,000 more women joined the labour market in the fourth quarter of 2012, new figures show.

A total of 64,435 women were in employment at the end of last year, accounting for 35.5 per cent of females aged 15 and over. This represents an increase of three percentage points in the number of employed women over a one-year period.

Yet, despite the increase, the number of employed women is still a far cry from that of men. The figures published by the National Statistics Office in the Labour Force Survey for the last three months of 2012 showed there were 109,021 employed men, or 61.5 per cent of the labour market.

The number of males in the labour market went down by 139 in the period under review.

A breakdown of activity rates by age showed that the number of women active in the labour market was comparable to that of men aged between 15 and 24. The gap widened in the subsequent age brackets.

The survey found that, in the 25-54 age bracket, nearly 60 per cent of women were active as opposed to 94 per cent in the case of men.