Speaking Male: Senior Women in the NZ Public Service

Abstract

Since New Zealand women first graduated from universities in the latter part of the 19th century they have turned to the public service for socially useful and intellectually satisfying employment. In the 21st century women make up half the public service workforce and about one-third of its senior ranks. The past century is marked by hard-fought campaigns for equal pay and equal opportunity that began with the first wave of feminism. Today women appear to have equal access to all levels of the public service although a gender balance in the senior ranks is yet to be achieved. This thesis investigates the experiences of women who held senior positions in the public service, a male-dominated hierarchy responsible for implementing the political agenda of the government of the day. Why did they want to be public servants and what problems did it present for them? What were their roles in women's engagement with the state bureaucracy and how had the bureaucracy changed in response? The research also attempted to find out how similar the experiences of women in this study were to women in other state bureaucracies, how similar their experiences were to each other, and how much had changed for women in the public service from the time the first female public servant was employed in New Zealand in 1894 until 2000. The study uses a feminist anthropological method combining published and archival material with in-depth interviews with 34 women who hold, or held, senior positions in the New Zealand public service. The women interviewed for the study were passionate about their careers, relishing the opportunity to engage in work that was challenging, important, exciting and for the benefit of everyone. However, they were also under no illusions that playing the game was sometimes necessary to be accepted by male colleagues and managers, described in interviews as the ability to 'speak male'. The study found that while many of the structural barriers to women's participation have been eliminated, with equal employment opportunities programmes contributing to these improvements. However, the gains are enjoyed mostly by Pakeha, able-bodied women. Further, attitudes towards women's role in the domestic sphere and the unequal burden many women carry in childrearing continue to hinder career opportunities of all women with dependants.