Something fascinating happened in New Zealand’s public service in 2020 – yes, they led a world-class response to COVID-19, it was also the first time that women outnumbered men in senior management. Slowly and steadily, the share of women in senior management has increased from about one-third in the early 2000s to 53.2% in 2020. It has been a long time coming, but there are problems in representation and the gender pay gap, particularly at the chief executive level.

Firstly, the good news. Who is contributing to the rising tide of female representation in senior management?

Unsurprisingly, the Ministry for Women leads the charge where almost 80% of its senior management are women. The Public Service Commission, true to its goals of being a public sector leader, trails only slightly behind at 73.9%.

The Ministry of Defence have increased representation of women in senior management more than anywhere else since 2015 – and has also increased its share of female employees faster than anywhere else. While they’ve been historical laggards, Defence has displayed concerted and sustained efforts to improve female representation in their workforce and is now majority female [1].

Despite these wins, given that 61.7% of the public service is female, but only 53.2% of senior management, women are still under-represented.

If we look closely, there are more interesting and important insights to be gleaned from this milestone.

With more women than men in senior management roles, one could reasonably expect salaries to reflect their positions. Right?

Nope. Pay equity still has a long way to go - there is still a 10% pay gap across the public sector. While the Ministry of Defence is now majority female at the senior level, it has the highest gender pay gap in the public service. That’s hard to reconcile, but at least it has dropped markedly since 2016.

We should not necessarily malign the Ministry of Defence for having the largest pay gap but look to them for how to effect organisational change. After all, they are the ones who made the biggest gains. With the composition of the Defence workforce quickly changing, presumably, their pay gap will continue to decline over coming years. Definitely, one to keep an eye on.

Looking within the senior management cohort, there are some troubling insights when we look at Chief Executives. Although the majority of senior managers are female, only one-third of Chief Executives are female. A more troubling insight is the stable and persistent gender pay gap for Chief Executives. These jobs substantively require the same level of skill, knowledge and experience and should not be exhibiting any bias towards paying any gender more over another, yet a gender pay gap of 6-7% persists.

My casual observation is that the current method of addressing the pay gap in the New Zealand public service is to ensure horizontal equity within non-executive pay grades. This is easy, low hanging fruit - so too would be addressing the gender pay gap of Chief Executives. Lets get it done.

[1] This excludes the New Zealand Defence Force. Unfortunately, the Public Service Commission does not include them in their reporting.