There have been some encouraging trends in the Australian Public Service over the representation of women in its higher echelons, but there is still a way to go in some departments.
The Public Service Commissioner’s Workplace Diversity Report 2000-01 revealed that the percentage of women in the Senior Executive Service in Defence has risen from 10.6 per cent in 1999-00 to 15.5 per cent in 2000-01. That is an impressive result, but it is off a low base, and Defence has the greatest gender imbalance in the SES. Treasury went backwards from 25.6 per cent to 17.5 and the Australian Bureau of Statistics went from 14.3 per cent to 17.5 per cent. These remain the poorest performing departments.
Women are much better represented in Education, Training and Youth Affairs and Health and Aged Care, both in terms of absolute numbers and the increase over the year.
The Public Service should not have as its aim an exact equality of the sexes in the SES. Nor should it have exact proportions of various religious or ethnic backgrounds. The Public Service should retain the merit principle. However, when the percentage of women in certain departments in very low, it indicates that the merit principle is not working. The talent, experience and training pool among men and women should be fairly similar after decades of growing equality of opportunity. The disparity might indicate that there is still a glass ceiling or even subtle discrimination in some departments.
It might well be that one could reasonably expect an imbalance in Defence because far more men have been attracted to the forces than women and a lot of defence experience resides on the military side. However, that should no longer hold true for Treasury and the Bureau of Statistics.
There are sound public policy reasons for the Public Service to strive for greater equality between the sexes. Women can bring a perspective to public administration and the development of public policy ideas that would be otherwise missed in a more male-dominated service. And given that the population the service serves is half female, it is important that those perspectives are not missed.
Grater equality is important in the private sector, but not so much as in the public sector. Companies and business partners have every right to use their money to appoint whomever they like. Private companies can hire their top executives on cronyism and favouritism, if it comes to that. Smart companies will realise that it is good business to appoint on merit and to make the best use of the talents of women, but there is no overriding public interest that this should be so – unlike in the Public Service.
The good news is that overall in the Public Service the percentage of women in the SES has risen from 25.3 per cent to 27.4 percent in the year to 2000-01. The total permanent number of the SES across the service is about 1700.
The commissioner needs to keep monitoring the position. Those departments not doing well should ask themselves why and what they can do to improve the position. That analysis will probably reveal the merit principle is not working as it should be. There should be no need for affirmative action – which replaces one iniquity with another. It makes men feel discriminated against and leaves women who have been promoted open to the accusation that they got jobs they were not worthy of.
With greater attention on appointment procedures the result is likely to be more women in the SES and the country’s public administration will be the better for it.