I’ve previously talked about how in 2020, for the first time ever, there were more women in New Zealand public sector senior management than men. The 2021 update showed that this was no anomaly, with women now comprising 53.5% of all senior managers. Although this lags broader female public sector representation – where they account for 61.7% of all employees – this milestone is still worth acknowledging.

Developing the skillsets required for senior leadership positions does not happen overnight. Building leadership and management capability requires sustained efforts and is decades in the making. In the last 10 years, the hiring of women in senior management roles has increased 75% while the level of male recruitment has remained broadly unchanged. It has been a boon for aspiring women in the public sector workforce.

So which agencies have been contributing most to the rising tide?

The Social Wellbeing Agency leads the charge, overtaking the Ministry of Women, with 80% of its senior managers being women. The Public Service Commission, true to its goals of being a public sector leader, trails only slightly behind at 76.7% - having increased from 73.9% last year [see Chart 1].

At the other end of the scale? The NZ Customs Service has 30.8% of senior managers identify as female, and has interestingly never exceeded one-third.

Nonetheless, there are more interesting and important insights:

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) have increased representation of women in senior management more than anywhere else. In 2015 only 15.4% of management identified as female, but has increased to 41.2% in 2021. MoD as also increased its share of female FTEs faster than anywhere else. Historical laggards no longer, MoD has displayed concerted and sustained efforts to improve female representation in their workforce, and is now majority female, having increased from 30.6% to 51.9% over the past decade[1]. However, their slight decrease in female senior executive representation during 2021 highlights that this issue requires vigilant commitment and cannot be solved in the short term.

All round great news, but what about the Gender Pay Gap? With more women than men in senior management roles, one could reasonably expect that it would be all but gone. Right?

Nope.

Although improvements are being made, pay equity still has a long way to go [see Chart 2], with the gap for 2021 coming in at 8.6%.  If the trend from the last decade continues, where it has decreased from 14.3% in 2011, it will still take until the mid to late-2030s for the gender pay gap to disappear.

Oranga Tamariki, miles ahead of the peloton, are the only organisation that have an inverted gender pay gap, where women are paid more than men. In 2021, it paid its female workforce – on average – were paid 2.3% more than its male workforce. In fact, not since its formation in 2017 has Oranga Tamariki recorded a gender pay gap favouring males.

Back at the Ministry of Defence: despite being majority female at the senior level, MoD still has the highest gender pay gap in the public service. That’s hard to reconcile, but at least it has dropped markedly since 2016, decreasing from 46.6% to 24.5%. We should not malign MoD for having the largest pay gap, but look to them for how to effect organisational change. 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.

Change is happening, slowly but surely.

However, the gender pay gap persists at the very top of the public service – at the Chief Executive level. These jobs substantively require the same level of skill, knowledge and experience and should not be exhibiting any bias towards paying one gender more over the other, yet a gender pay gap persists [see Chart 3].

Preliminary data for 2021 shows that this gap has narrowed to 2.7%, down from 3.9% in 2020. Given the recent trends, we should expect that this gap be all but closed within coming years – an outcome we should all look forward to.

[1] This excludes the New Zealand Defence Force. Unfortunately, the Public Service Commission does not include them in their reporting. There is no reason why this should be the case.