Evidencing womens progress in Aotearoa New Zealands public service

Recent progress with gender equity in the public service of Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) has been widely attributed to regulatory and sector policy changes that have in turn been driven by campaigns, legal precedents, and international conventions. However, NZ’s public service is yet to demonstrate gender equity on various measures, and progress to date has not been uniformly experienced by all women in the sector. Furthermore, much extant scholarship has examined the macro-context for equity advancements while neglecting everyday institutional-level factors that influence women’s progress. In this chapter, we give an overview of historical developments in women’s progress in NZ’s public service before focusing on two studies in which public service stakeholders denote organisational challenges to the attainment of gender and diversity parity in various public service agencies. Content analysis of informants’ comments informs our concluding section on recommended actions to advance equity in NZ’s gender diverse public service.