IN light of International Women’s Day and protests around the world against inequality and injustice against women, Coffs Harbour City councillor Sally Townley has criticised the lack of gender equity within Coffs Harbour City Council.
Cr Townley raised the issue while councillors were debating Council’s performance when benchmarked against 87 other councils in Australia and New Zealand in the Australasian Local Government Performance Excellence Program Report for the 2019-2020 financial year.
The participating councils included 50 from NSW, six from New Zealand, ten from South Australia and 21 from Western Australia.
The program measures and provides Council’s strategic and operational insights into workforce, finance, operations, service delivery, corporate leadership and asset management.
The results of the annual Performance Excellence Report inform areas of focus for improvement initiatives for Council in the future.
The report detailed that only 34% of Coffs Harbour City Council’s employees were women, and only 20% of Council’s employees at Manager level and above are women.
There are no female Council CEOs, no female Council Directors, 27% of women are employed at Manager level, 38% are employed at Team Leader level, 45% are employed at Supervisor level, and females make up 33% of other staff roles.
The gender split by service area saw 3% of women employed in Coffs Harbour City Council’s Roads & Bridges service area, 13% of females employed in Parks and gardens, 5% employed in Sewerage Services, 6% employed in Water supplies, 38% employed in Town Planning, and 63% employed in Governance and Administration.
The proportion of women employed across all the councils surveyed came in at 44%, compared to Coffs Harbour City Council’s 34% of female employees.
A Council report on the Australasian Local Government Performance Excellence Program Report justified the gender imbalance by stating “this result (and the overall workforce gender balance) is significantly influenced by the proportion of services/functions delivered by CHCC that tend to attract male candidates”.
“Specifically, this includes including civil construction and water/sewer activities which represent around 40% of the CHCC workforce,” the Council report stated.
Cr Sally Townley said at Council’s ordinary meeting on Thursday 11 March that the report results felt a bit like “groundhog day”.
“It kind of feels a little bit like groundhog day in some ways because there’s really important areas where we just seem to really be failing to make any headway, and one of those is in gender equity,” Cr Townley stated.
“We’re not only not seeing an increase in female staff at upper levels, but even closing the gap towards gender equity towards parity at all levels of staff we just don’t seem to be shifting those figures after five years.
“In other jurisdictions, for example New Zealand, they’re much much closer in all levels of local government staffing to attaining something close to gender equity.”
The Council report on the Australasian Local Government Performance Excellence Program Report stated, “CHCC’s commitment to gender equity and diversity is ongoing and in seeking to improve our results even further, a revised Diversity and Inclusion Management Plan, incorporating the Equal Employment Opportunity Management Plan, will be prepared as part of an updated Workforce Management Plan for the 2021/22 Integrated Planning and Reporting cycle”.
By Emma DARBIN