Sunrise on pay and employment equity in local government?

A big gender pay gap has been revealed in one of the first pay and employment equity reviews to be conducted in local government in New Zealand.

Gisborne District Council, with 265 permanent staff, has a 46 per cent female to 54 per cent male workforce split.

The median full time equivalent (FTE) salary of female staff within the Council is 78.4% of the median FTE salary of male staff.

The median actual salary (taking account of part time work) of female staff is 79.3% of the median actual salary of male staff.

A little over half the women earn less than $40,000 compared to 26 per cent of men, while 27% of men earn more than $60,000 compared to only 7% of women.

The gender pay gap is partly due to occupational segregation.
The workforce data showed women concentrated as librarians, call centre operators, clerical workers, secretaries (100%) and planners while men dominated engineering (100%), specialist managers(100%0 and managers (84%) and technicians and trade workers(1005). Lifeguards were predominately male (70%) compared to 30% women.

The Gisborne case study showed that the review successfully engaged staff and identified issues such as the need to:

• Ensure the absence of gender bias in job evaluations
• Improve the low proportion of women in management positions
• Improve participation among low paid staff in KiwiSaver
• Build women’s confidence in fairness of training and development, promotion and performance management
• Build awareness of flexible working