Page 4471 - Week 10 - Thursday, 23 September 2010
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This means that the average earnings of female employees were more than the average earnings of male employees, the reason appearing to be the higher proportion of females in certain areas. For instance, while there are a number of classification groups that are fifty-fifty in the DHCS workforce, women represent approximately 62 per cent of senior officer, 66 per cent of administrative officer and 89 per cent of the health professional officer classifications. A number of other variables identified in the report include length of service, generation groups and changing work expectations.
I am positive that the commissioner’s intentions to incorporate an ongoing analysis of classification groups by agencies in future workforce profiles will continue to provide insight into gender pay equity in the ACT public service to enable comparisons over time. Measures such as these will provide the government with opportunities to identify where the issues are and to improve equity for all employees of the ACT public service.
Gender equity was an issue I discussed with the women’s ministers at the Ministerial Conference on the Status of Women, which I chaired, on 17 September. I provided those other ministers with the commissioner’s report. The discussions reflected the challenges that women’s ministers face when identifying where gender inequities exist for Australian women and what needs to be done to overcome these challenges.
An ongoing piece of work for measuring progress is the Australian gender indicators project. One of the aims of the project, being undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, is to provide indicators that will allow us to measure the more demographic gender equity changes across Australia.
I would like to thank the Commissioner for Public Administration for undertaking this important work. The outcome of this work supports our commitment under the ACT women’s plan 2010-15 to provide more meaningful sex-disaggregated data. It supports key priorities for this government in measuring how women in the ACT are progressing in the economic sphere. It supports our commitment to implement gender analysis processes across the ACT government activities. And, as mentioned previously, it supports work being conducted at a national level.
I trust that Assembly members acknowledge the ACT government’s commitment and, importantly, action towards addressing gender pay equity in the ACT public service.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (3.37): I welcome this piece of work from the Commissioner for Public Administration. This supplementary gender analysis came from a motion that was passed earlier this year around International Women’s Day. I thank the minister and the Labor Party for supporting that Greens’ motion. At first it seemed as though it was going to be a very difficult task, but I am pleased that members of the public service were able to take on this task and follow through with it. I am also pleased to note that, in the final paragraph in the foreword, the Commissioner for Public Administration, Catherine Hudson, said:
It is relatively positive news in the ACTPS when reviewing gender pay equity however more can be done, such as sustained and enhanced reporting of this nature in future editions of the Workforce Profile.
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