The Ministry's gender pay gap data is not included in the public service workforce data because it does not meet the threshold required to produce meaningful high-level gender pay gap statistics as specified in the Stats NZ guidelines for measuring organisational gender pay gaps. This is because the Ministry does not meet the requirement of having at least 20 men and 20 women within its workforce.
In the spirit of openness and transparency, the Ministry does measure and publish its gender pay gap, but the number itself, given its volatility, is not a good measure of gender equality in the Ministry.
The Ministry's gender pay gap for 2022 was: -0.1% in favour of women (as at 30 June 2022). For the past three years, our gender pay gap has been 8.5% (2021), 7.6% (2020) and 1.1% (2019) in favour of men. Care needs to be taken with the interpretation of the figures as changes in the Ministry’s staffing (even small changes) make the figure volatile.
Since the gender pay gap is not a robust measure for the Ministry, we use other measures to monitor gender equity within the organisation. This includes workforce profile, people data, and recruitment statistics to help indicate progress. The Ministry ensures that employees in the same or similar roles are paid equitably (i.e., there are no like-for-like pay gaps).
The Ministry is committed to the principles and actions in Kia Toipoto of addressing equal pay, flexible by default, removing bias or discrimination from remuneration systems and human resource practices, gender-balanced leadership, and supporting the implementation of Kia Toipoto across the public sector.