Overall government results

At 30 June 2020, there were 343 Australian Government boards with 2,489 filled positions. Women filled 48.5 per cent of all board positions (1,206 positions were filled by women).

This result is an increase of 0.6 percentage points since 30 June 2019 when women filled 47.9 per cent of Government board positions (1,109 of 2,313 filled positions).

Table 1 details the number of boards, number and percentage of occupied positions by gender, and the percentage point difference from the previous year, since 2015.

Table 1: Gender balance on Australian Government boards as at 30 June, from 2015 to 2020

Portfolio results

At 30 June 2020, four out of 13 portfolios met or exceeded the 50 per cent gender diversity target: Social Services (including Services Australia); Foreign Affairs and Trade; Health; and Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.

Women held between 45 and 50 per cent of board positions in a further six portfolios: Defence (including the Department of Veteran’s Affairs at 54.9 per cent women and the Department of Defence at 45.9 per cent women); Agriculture, Water and the Environment; Prime Minister and Cabinet; Education, Skills and Employment; Home Affairs and Attorney-General’s (see Figure 1 and Table 2).

Figure 1: Gender balance of overall Australian Government board positions as at 30 June 2020, by portfolio

 

Table 2: Gender balance of overall Australian Government board positions as at 30 June 2020, by portfolio

New appointments

New appointments are those appointments made over the 2019-20 financial year that were not reappointments of the same person to the same position.

Of the 622 new appointments made in 2019-20, 50.5 per cent of appointees were women. This is a decrease since the last annual report when women comprised 52.7 per cent of new appointees.

Table 3 shows at 30 June 2020, in eight of 13 portfolios, women represented 50 per cent or more of new appointments.

Table 3: Gender balance of new appointments in 2019-20, by portfolio

Chair and Deputy Chair roles

As the most senior board members, the Chair and Deputy Chair positions are crucial to the functioning of every board.

At 30 June 2020, women held 36.9 per cent of Chair and Deputy Chair positions across all Government boards. This result is 1.9 percentage points higher than the 30 June 2019 result, when women held 35.0 per cent of Chair and Deputy Chair positions.

Figure 2 details the portfolio results for the gender balance of Chair and Deputy Chair positions on 30 June 2020. This data excludes Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director and Managing Director positions.

Figure 2: Gender balance of Chair and Deputy Chair positions as at 30 June 2020, by portfolio

External nominations

An external nomination is one which is made by a person or organisation who is not the Minister responsible for approving the appointment, or a member of their department. This may include, for example, a state or territory government or non-government body, and extends to appointment processes where it is either legislated or accepted practice for nominations to be provided to the Minister.

While all nominations are reported, not all nominations made by external bodies resulted in the appointment of the nominee. For example, multiple nominations may be received for the same vacancy.

Of the 63 external nominations received for Government board appointments in 2019-20, 49.2 per cent of nominations were for women (see Table 5). This is an increase of 14.8 percentage points from the 2018-19 result, when women accounted for 34.4 per cent of external nominations.

Table 5: External nominations for board positions received in 2019-20, by nominating organisation