The Karpin Report
There has been considerable national data and discourse about the minority role played in Australian management by Australian women. For example the influential “Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills” chaired by David Karpin concluded in 1995 that while change in this area was occurring, it was at a snail’s pace. It is now more than a decade since the Task Force Report was first considered, especially in view of its many forward-looking and well-researched recommendations, which concerned itself primarily with the management issues of the then-private sector. However aspects of the commissioned research of the Task Force have continued to be relevant. For example Task Force research considered a vast array of women in management literature to establish if there were any major problem areas or deficits in performance of women managers compared to men and found “little evidence of substantial differences in terms of dominance, confidence or sense of security, or in terms of capacity to lead, influence or motivate, nor differences in humanitarian approach, understanding or capacity to reduce interpersonal friction” Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills (1995: 1192). This finding suggested that gender is not a crucial issue in leadership, and that for women there was an issue of opportunity rather than performance, when comparing their role to men’s in management situations. The Task Force concluded that women were the major disadvantaged group within Australian management. The report and findings became highly influential in policy debates, and in feminist critiques of the status quo. Since the 1990s government policy concerning gender differences has been broadened to include most aspects of diversity in the work place.
Women in the Australian Public Service Today
The Public Service Act 1999 has a mandatory requirement that agency heads establish work diversity programs, one of the aims of which is to remove employment disadvantage based on gender. Outcomes for women are now impressive, and indicate the success women now have in fulfilling public service management roles – for example the percentage of employees who were women in 2008 approached 60%.
Public Service data also indicate that the proportional representation of men and women varies significantly at the agency level. For example, of agencies of more than 1000 ongoing employees, Bureau of Meteorology had the highest proportion of men (80.1%), followed by Defence (63.5%), Medicare Australia (80.3%) while Human Services (76.7%) had the highest proportion of women (State of the Service 2005-06: 87). Women are still under-represented at senior levels despite significant gains for women at the middle-and lower-levels of management in the Service. There is thus evidence that the scope of the employment of women could be widened, especially in some agencies.
Recent data also indicates that only 49.9% of women have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 54% of men. This can mean that women need additional competency and mentoring arrangements if they are to compete effectively with men in the Service (State of the Service Report 2005-06: 90). The majority of employees now believe that gender is not a barrier in the workplace. The Australian Public Service is thus proving very attractive to women. On the other hand, women managers in the Australian Public Service are reported to be more likely to believe they had witnessed bullying or harassment in the workplace . This issue remains to be resolved.
There has also been a range of initiatives of great benefit to women (often the primary carers of children) adopted in the APS, and these have been designed to be broader and more equitable than satisfying womens needs. Agencies now provide an extensive range of family-friendly options for women and men in the Service. For example:
? Paid maternity leave
? Flexible working hours,
? Opportunities to work from home –available in many agencies and;
? Other less financially generous but available conditions of service including a minimum entitlement to 52 weeks of unpaid parental leave following birth or adoption of a child, one week unpaid paternity leave at the time of the birth of a child, and a maximum of three weeks unpaid leave for a couple when adopting.
? Some agencies have also initiated school holiday programs for their employees together with salary packaging of child care fees, and the provision of childcare centres for the children of staff.
? Job-sharing available in some agencies is still not widely used in the APS, and this possibility needs further development as it would permit carers (who are often women) more time to support family life and therefore resolve work and family conflicts of responsibility.
The Feminisation of the Australian Public Service
The Australian Public Service has achieved significant improvements in the role and participation of women in the Service as reported here:
“Although this is pleasing, agencies need to ensure that they make themselves attractive to a wide range of employees so that the APS can continue to be representative of the community it serves. In time this may mean that the APS may need to recruit more young men” (State of the Service Report 2005-06: 133).
There remains also the continuing challenge for APS policy-makers to develop diversity issues more fully in order to manage the Public Service in an effective and democratic manner, beyond earlier and now often-satisfied concerns of establishing and improving the role of women in public agencies. Many more women in the Service will need to foster and demonstrate outstanding management and leadership skills if their minority role in top management within the Service is to be a matter of the past. This could be achieved by more use of networking, and lobbying opportunities in agencies, by women, and effective use of mentoring, leadership and coaching opportunities both in the Service and also from private sources such as management consultancies available throughout Australia.
It now appears that given the history of encouraging diversity in the APS and the increased success this has meant for women that resourcing the initiative should now increasingly be focused on enhancing and affirming women in top management positions of the APS.
References
Australian Public Service Commission, State of the Service Report 2005-06, [on line] http://www.aspc.gov.au/stateoftheservice/0506/report.pdf [accessed 27 March 2007]
Australian Public Service Commission, State of the Service Report: At a Glance 2007-2008, [on line] stateoftheservice/0708/downloadshtm [accessed 26 August 2009]
Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills 1995, Enterprising Nation, AGPS, Canberra
