Diversity, equity and inclusion

Gender and equity in the public sector

Professor Jane Parker, Associate Professor Janet Sayers, Dr Amanda Young-Hauser, Dr Shirley Barnett, Pat Loga and Selu Paea look at how far gender equity has progressed in New Zealand’s public service.

Population and labour force forecasts for Aotearoa New Zealand indicate that diversification will not only continue but intensify. HR professionals are among the stakeholders who can strategically and operationally respond to this complex dynamic, recognising that diversity management and efforts to enhance employee inclusion can yield benefits – and challenges – for those employees and their workplace.

HR professionals are among the stakeholders who can strategically and operationally respond to this complex dynamic.

Far-reaching inquiry

From early 2020 to mid-2022, a Massey University-funded study examined the extent of progress on gender equity in New Zealand’s public service. It focused on Māori and Pacific women, who tend to be over-represented in lower-level roles and under-represented in leadership. At the same time, their pay and other work-related gaps relative to men remain wider than for European women, further stressing the need to identify effective remedies.

In the inquiry, researchers from different disciplinary, methodological and work backgrounds worked with sector and equity experts from, for example, the Ministry for Women, Ministry for Pacific Peoples, Council of Trade Unions, Public Service Association and Human Rights Commission, along with managers and staff from three public service agencies. Material from semi-structured interviews with 72 informants was assessed.

Summary of findings

On the manager’s role in progressing gender and intersectional equity, our interviewees highlighted the following insights.

• Equity, diversity and inclusion efforts need to include, but not be led exclusively by, HR. By engaging multiple stakeholders, including minority women employees, in the design and implementation of equity strategies, workplaces were widely seen to encourage an understanding of plural interests, and a ‘speak up’ culture underwritten by leader accountability, equity success stories, role models and improved messaging.

• Equity perspectives differ. HR needs to be among those who engage in regular, multi-site discussions to appreciate existing inequities and how to facilitate context-sensitive progress. For example, employees and managers expressed culturally nuanced views of equity that could help to inform equity aims, approaches and measures to recalibrate an emphasis on employees’ technical skills towards valuing and developing cultural and interpersonal skills.

• Conduct a review, not a reinvention, of the wheel. Many saw HR as having the expertise to ‘stocktake’ their organisation’s equity platforms. In so doing, it helped to inform an equity needs assessment and to establish the basis for the strategic direction of future initiatives.

• Commitment to equity needs ‘future proofing’. To help build and sustain the momentum and impact of multilateral changes, HR is well placed to monitor, evaluate and benchmark equity progress and initiatives, in that way helping to safeguard resources for, and gains from, these initiatives. Many informants stressed that well-planned and well-executed initiatives take time to bed in and influence complex institutional practices and culture.

• Equity pursuits need a context of trust-based employment relations. HR and others can be pivotal in helping engender a trust-based workplace culture in which stakeholders are more likely to examine and discuss equity challenges and strategies at all levels. Some suggested that this could be facilitated by identity group collaborations (eg, as occurs between the sector-wide Women in Governance network and women’s groups within public service agencies) and by greater equity training and development for all, including managers.

• Managers’ workload capacity needs closer evaluation. Many stressed that heavy workloads for managers create a tension between their capacity to complete tasks and their capacity to actively champion equity goals. HR could encourage the prioritisation of gender and intersectional equity in wider work strategies. As the pandemic continues, this could usefully involve greater exploration of agile ways of working and using IT to reflect employee diversity and encourage their inclusion.

Reports produced for the participating agencies included a range of quotes from interviewees to highlight their voices. These reports culminated in a tailored or ‘best fit’ equity index, which is designed to spark dialogue and reflection on equity, and to frame future initiatives around equity goalsetting, conceptualisations, strategies and practices.

HR needs to be among those who engage in regular, multi-site discussions to appreciate existing inequities and how to facilitate contextsensitive progress.

The big picture

Alongside this institutional-level focus, informants’ views on the roles of HR and others in progressing equity may be shaped by New Zealand’s public service regulatory and policy framework. For example, the Public Service Act 2020 seeks to strengthen the ‘shared identity of public servants’ to enable a cultural shift that builds a unified (but not necessarily homogeneous), agile and collaborative service that improves all New Zealanders’ wellbeing.

The Act also aims to strengthen the relationship between Māori and the Crown under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, though gender and ethnicity are presented in an uncoupled manner. For its part, the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2020 supports the settling of gender pay equity claims within existing collective bargaining arrangements. However, the dynamics of people’s personal circumstances, work and wider environments highlight that advancing equity for Māori and Pacific women and others is a perpetual work in progress.

Jane Parker is a Chartered Member of HRNZ and codirects Massey’s MPOWER Group. She is an editorial board member of the Human Relations journal and co-editor-in-chief of the Labour and Industry journal. Her research focuses on strategic HRM, comparative employment relations, and diversity and inclusion. Jane has been commissioned for various employment projects by the International Labour Organization, Eurofound, European Trade Union Institute and United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council, among others.