Representations of New Public Management in Australian Public Service gender equality policies

• Pages: 235-250
• Published date: 23 December 2019
• Date: 23 December 2019
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-05-2019-0145
• Author: Sue Williamson,Lisa Carson,Meraiah Foley
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity,equality,inclusion

Representations of New Public

Management in Australian Public

Service gender equality policies

Sue Williamson and Lisa Carson

UNSW Canberra, Canberra, Australia, and

Meraiah Foley

The University of Sydney Business School, Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Purpose –Governments have demonstrated a renewed interest in progressing gender equality

for their workforces, including in Australia. This refocusing has resulted in a tranche of new gender

equality policies being introduced into the Australian Public Service (APS). The purpose of this

paper is to examine how New Public Management (NPM) is reflected in these gender equality policies and

consider whether NPM may assist or hinder gender being “undone”or “redone”in APS organisations.

Design/methodology/approach –A content analysis was conducted to assess the strategies contained

within the gender equality policies of all 18 Australian government departments.

Findings –The content analysis reveals that the policies strongly reflect an NPM framing, except in one

important area –that of monitoring and evaluation. The lack of attention to this crucial element of NPM may

hinder effective implementation of many of the policies. The authors also conclude that while good intent is

evident in the policies, they may “redo”rather than “undo”gender in organisations.

Practical implications –The paper will assist organisations which are developing and implementing

gender equality policies. Even though NPM is specific to the public sector, the research highlights the

potential and pitfalls when developing such policies in an environment focused on increasing efficienciesand

reducing costs.

Originality/value –While gender equality and public sector reforms occurred simultaneously in Australia,

few researchers have examined the interactions between the two.

Keywords Gender, Management culture, Women, Equal opportunities, Government policy,

Public sector organizations

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Public management in developed countries has undergone seismic reforms over recent

decades. By the end of the 1970s, constrained economic conditions drove the governments of

Britain, the USA and Australia to reform their approach to public administration and public

employment (O’Donnell et al., 2011; Podger, 2017). As Bach and Kessler (2007) explain, an

ageing population and increased demand for welfare services in western economies placed

pressure on budgets, leading to calls for increased fiscal restraint and reduced state

intervention. Governments embraced tenets of New Public Management (NPM), which held

that government services should be designed, organised and managed in a quasi-business

manner, bringing private sector principles of efficiency, productivity and accountability into

the public sector (Diefenbach, 2009). In Australia, competitive pressures from increased

globalization, increased demands for better services and an emphasis on “value for money”

(O’Donnell et al., 1999, p. 90) drove NPM reforms.

These reforms resulted in the marginalisation of gender equality issues in the public

sector, including in the Australian Public Service (APS), an early leader in promoting fair

and equitable employment conditions (Rubery, 2013). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s,

the APS paved the way for working women, becoming the first major Australian

employer to provide paid maternity leave and actively promote Equal Employment

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 39 No. 2, 2020

pp. 235-250

© Emerald PublishingLimited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-05-2019-0145

Received 4 May 2019

Revised 29 August 2019

2 November 2019

Accepted 27 November 2019

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

235

Representations

of NPM in

the APS

Opportunity (EEO) initiatives (Williamson, 2015). APS agencies developed action plans

for disadvantaged groups, including women, which led to a steady increase of women in

senior levels (Summers, 2003).

As NPM gained ascendency through the 1980s and 1990s, equity issues were sidelined in

favour of reforms aimed at making the public sector more efficient and competitive

(Eisenstein, 1996). Some of these reforms had a direct impact on the government’s equity

agenda. Through the 1990s, for example, responsibility for the implementation of EEO

initiatives was devolved from central agencies, which had oversight of the entire APS, to

individual agencies, and then individual managers (Gardner and Palmer, 1997). Although

this devolution was a central tenet of NPM, untrained managers were often unable and

unprepared to progress gender equality (Williamson et al., 2019).

Implementation of an increasingly neoliberal agenda resulted in gender equality in the

APS being marginalised, as the government focused on cost savings and reducing the size

of the service (Eisenstein, 1996). As a result, progress toward gender equality slowed

through the 1990s. In an oblique acknowledgement that gender equality in the APS had

stalled, the Australian government recently recommitted to progressing gender equality in

the APS. The government pledged to increase women’s workforce participation as part of a

2014 commitment to the G20 (APSC, 2016). APS agencies subsequently developed and

implemented gender equality plans. As the Australian government stated: “(i)t is time for

the APS to be a leader once again in gender equality”(APSC, 2016, p. 3).

Not only have NPM reforms marginalised efforts to progress genderequality, it has been

argued that they have contributed to the ongoing gendering of organisations, reinforcing

stereotypical gender roles in the workplace (McDougall, 1998; Davies and Thomas, 2002;

Corby, 2011; Williamson and Colley,2018). Relatively little research, however, hasspecifically

examined whether and to what extent NPM is reflected in the specific policies adopted to

advance gender equality in the public sector and whether such policies can alter gendered

structures and relations. This is a notable omission, as NPM has guided how resources are

deployed, and the governance and operating systems of public sectors. The way in which

policies are framedand the dominant ideology that informsthem is important to determine as

it impacts on implementation and likelyresults (Burgess et al., 2009). Further,gender equality

policies have the potential to dismantle genderednorms in organisations (Ely and Meyerson,

2000) –a project which can be impacted by NPM. Wetherefore ask: how is NPM reflected in

the gender equalitypolicies in the APS? Is the presence of NPM in the policies likely to assist

or hinder gender being “undone”or “redone”in APS agencies?

Using content analysis, we examine the gender equality policies of all 18 federal

Australian government departments to assess whether and to what extent NPM principles

are manifest within those policies using a typology of NPM (Diefenbach, 2009). The paper

begins by examining the relevant literature on NPM, followed by a brief historical overview

of the development of gender equality policies in the APS. After an explication of the

methodology, we show that most elements of NPM are reflected in APS gender equality

policies, but attention to one crucial area –monitoring and evaluation –is lacking. We

conclude that although the policies may contribute somewhat to progressing gender

equality, a lack of systemic changes may have limited impact on changing the gendered

nature of public sector agencies.

New Public Management

NPM is a broad term encompassing a range of neoliberal reforms adopted by governments

across the developed world from the 1970s onward. According to Hood (1991), NPM can be

understood as the loose intersection of competitive, private sector principles applied to

public sector management. At the macro level, NPM saw the decentralisation and

dismantling of monolithic bureaucracies into smaller, corporatized units, which were

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