More progress coming for women in the public sector

  • Hon Chris Hipkins
  • Hon Julie Anne Genter
State Services Women

State Services Minister Chris Hipkins and Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter have welcomed the State Services Commission’s 2017 Human Resource Capability (HRC) Survey published today.

 The report provides a comprehensive overview of the Public Service workforce across 29 departments.

 “The report shows progress is being made on important issues like the gender pay gap,” Mr Hipkins said.

 “The public service gender pay gap is now 12.5 per cent, down one per cent on 2016. That’s very encouraging but we need to step up momentum.”

 Ms Genter said “This Government is committed to addressing the gender pay gap within the public service in this Parliamentary term, to accelerate the efforts to ensure that women are being paid fairly.

 “We are working with public service chief executives to agree targets to accelerate the pace of change. I am delighted that all public service chief executives are committed to this effort.

 “Māori and Pasifika women continue to be underpaid for the work that they do, so more attention needs to happen around the reasons why.”

 She said she is very pleased to see more women in senior management roles and in chief executives roles. “I would love to see private sector leaders also strive for higher levels of women in leadership,” Ms Genter said.

 The Ministers said there was also more work to do in other areas. They supported State Service Commissioner Peter Hughes’s commitment to reduce the ethnic pay gap and lack of diversity in leadership roles.