ACT Minister for Women Yvette Berry says the gender pay gap in the ACT public service is “only two per cent”.

The ACT’s State of the Service Report 2014-2015 was released this week (available here in PDF form), showing that the ACT Public Service (ACTPS) remains an employer of choice for women.

“The report demonstrates consistent ACTPS performance on gender pay gap, female workforce and female executive participation,” Ms Berry said.

Across Australia, women earn about 17.9 per cent less than their male colleagues, but in the ACT labour market the gender pay gap is about 11.7 per cent.

Ms Berry says the ACTPS is strongly representative of the community it serves.

“In 2015 the ACTPS has 13,593 female employees, 65 per cent of the full-time-equivalent workforce,” she said.

“This is approximately 17 percentage points more women than the overall ACT labour force (48.3 per cent) and approximately 19 percentage points more than the Australian labour force (46.1 per cent).”

In executive and decision-making roles, women hold 42 per cent of Senior Executive positions.

A recent study by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency revealed that only 17.3 per cent of women occupy chief executive officer roles and 26.1 per cent of key management positions in the national labour force.

In the ACTPS six out of eight Directors-General, including the Head of Service Kathy Leigh, are women.

“As Minister for Women I know there is still work to close that 2 per cent gap, to ensure women are represented across a diverse range of policy areas and to improve parity in the private sector,” Ms Berry said.