Women currently comprise just over a third of senior managers in the Australian Public Service (APS). The Australian Government has committed to increasing the percentage of women in senior leadership to 50 per cent, in a recently released gender equality strategy for the APS (APSC, 2016).
Research has shown that while gender targets are necessary, the ‘trickle down’ theory that gender equality throughout an organisation will be achieved when there are equal numbers of women and men in leadership does not always hold. Progress towards gender equality is achieved when numerical parity is accompanied by strategies which break down gendered organisational structures (Holzhammer, 2014; Rindfleish and Sheridan, 2003). The author therefore seeks to answer the research question: ‘what strategies are needed to change gendered organisational structures to progress gender equality’?
Based on qualitative data from four case study organisations, this paper presents the first findings of a longitudinal study examining implementation of the APS gender equality strategy, or initiatives already underway when the strategy was released. Initial results show agencies had increased the numbers of women in the most senior levels of management and had also introduced innovations to progress gender equality, including new ways of working flexibly and initiatives which aimed to remove an individual’s hidden gender biases.
Barriers, however, to workplace gender equality were also found, which operated to limit women’s opportunities and hinder access to leadership positions. These included circumscribed opportunities for part-time work and career progression, a long hours culture and inadequate understanding and application of the merit principle for recruitment and promotion. Barriers not only limited leadership aspirations, however, but reinforced masculinist organisational cultures, as evidenced through language and symbols used throughout some of the organisations.
Using a theoretical framework of feminist intervention strategies for change, the author concludes that a focus on increasing the numbers of senior female managers is necessary, but needs to be supported by initiatives which benefit female employees at much lower levels. Initiatives which target both women and men need to be accompanied by gender mainstreaming and other processes which ‘disrupt gendering’ (Benschop and Verloo, 2011). Only when this occurs will progress towards gender equality move from being a trickle to a flood.
References
Australian Public Service Commission (2016) Balancing the Future: The APS Gender Equality Strategy 2016-2019, http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications-and-media/current-publications/gender-equality-strategy
Benschop, Y and Verloo, M (2011) ‘Gender Change, Organizational Change, and Gender Equality Strategies, Handbook of Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester.
Holzhammer, M (2014) ‘The Proposed Gender Equality Directive: Legality, Legitimacy, and Efficacy of Mandated Gender Equality in Business Leadership’, Yearbook of European Law, 33:1, 433-465.
Rindfleish, J, Sheridan, A (2003) ‘No change from within: senior women managers’ response to gendered organizational structures’, Women in Management Review, 18: 6, 299 – 310.
