The report Gender Equality in the Civil Service is the outcome of research commissioned as part of the ongoing development of human resources management policies under the Strategic Management Initiative in the Civil Service. Delivering Better Government noted that while the Civil Service had been to the forefront in developing and implementing policies to achieve greater equality of opportunity, women employees remained concentrated at lower levels. In view of the need to redress the imbalance, DBG recommended that appropriate strategies be put in place. It was in this context that research was commissioned on the under representation of women in the grades at and above HEO level.
The main research findings, together with a package of measures based on the recommendations in the report, were endorsed by the Government and were presented by the Taoiseach and me at the launch of the current phase of the Strategic Management Initiative for the Civil Service in July 1999.
The key elements of these measures are: the development and adoption of a new equality policy; a programme of affirmative action in the main human resource policy areas of recruitment, placement and mobility, training and development, promotion, work and family responsibilities, language and sexual harassment and policy delivery; the adoption of strategic objective setting at individual Department-office level, including the setting of increasingly specific equality goals, to be achieved over a stated period of time; new equality structures to be put in place, both locally and centrally, to support implementation of the policy and the adoption of a communications strategy for implementation.
A high level gender equality management group, chaired by Ms Josephine Feehily, Revenue Commissioner, is at an advanced stage of developing a new gender equality policy for the Civil Service. It is an objective of the measures agreed by Government that significant progress should be made towards improving the representation of women at senior management levels in the Civil Service.
My Department has recently agreed a new policy on harassment, sexual harassment and bullying for the Civil Service with the staff unions. The purpose of the policy is to provide a positive working environment and an effective mechanism for the investigation of complaints of harassment, sexual harassment and bullying.
