Queensland's female public servants have their say in survey
Most Queensland female public servants still see organisational culture and stereotypes as detrimental to their careers, according to a University of Queensland study.
The survey of 3500 Queensland female public servants' careers is believed to be the most comprehensive look at the area ever undertaken in Australia.
Graduate School of Management head Professor Victor Callan and principal project officer in the Equity and Resolution Office of the Public Service, Julie Dickinson, researched and prepared the Survey of Women in the Queensland Public Sector between September and December last year.
Almost 3500 women across 28 agencies were interviewed about a range of areas including career aspirations and strategies, perceptions of the workplace environment, support from senior executives, flexibility of working arrangements, training and development opportunities and discrimination and harassment.
Part of the State Government's strategy to have 20 percent of public sector senior executive positions filled by women by 2000 and 25 percent by 2005, the survey was initiated by the Equity and Resolution Unit.
Professor Callan said the survey found that while women were generally happy about the availability of training and development opportunities, flexible working arrangements and supervisor support, the Public Sector still had a long way to go in improving women's career progression.
"Organisational culture has emerged in Australia and overseas organisations as a major barrier to women's career advancement," he said.
"Despite equal opportunity and anti-discrimination legislation encouraging equity and the recognition of women's skills and abilities, the Karpin Report (1995) noted traditional structures and cultures remained in a majority of Australian organisations with organisational values and behaviours still very resistant to change."
For example, while most women said flexible working arrangements in the public sector to balance work and family responsibilities such as job-sharing and part-time work were freely available, they also perceived this form of working arrangement as detrimental to their careers, he said.
"Respondents rated their organisations as promoting environments engendering the belief that a woman must work long hours in order to advance her career."
Ms Dickinson said findings such as this would lead to the development of managerial training programs on how to actively support and encourage the diverse range of workers and working arrangements now in place.
"Diversity brings to an organisation different dimensions, ideas and talents. Managers now need to place more emphasis on the end product - whether the job is being done successfully - rather than the full-time or other status of the person doing it," she said.
"The survey recommends many ways managers can improve women's career progression within the public sector including supporting and encouraging training and development programs, developing networking and mentoring programs and adopting a hardline stance on sexual harassment.
"The continued high level of support from chief executive officers and senior executive teams for employment equity initiatives is imperative in this."
Other key findings of the survey were as follows:
o While most women viewed training and development opportunities as being widely available, these were seen as being the domain of women on higher salaries.
o Women with salaries of between $44,843 and $62,072 per year, aspiring to be senior executives, were the most disenchanted and dissatisfied across survey items. "These women are assuming positions of responsibility with the expectation of long work hours without the resources' support afforded to senior executive positions," Ms Dickinson said.
o A third of women surveyed reported some form of discrimination and one-third reported harassment experiences in the past one to two years.
Ms Dickinson said the report had recently been presented to Queensland Premier Peter Beattie and Public Service Commissioner Dr Brian Head with both re-iterating their support for initiatives promoting more women to senior levels.
Just over 55 percent of Queensland's public sector is made up of women with 16 percent of all senior executive positions (those earning more than $62,000 per annum) held by women.
For more information, contact Professor Callan (telephone 07 3365 6225) or Ms Dickinson (telephone 07 3224 6686).
