Overall government results

At 30 June 2021, there were 342 Australian Government boards with 2,315 filled positions. Women filled 49.6 per cent of all board positions (1,149 positions were filled by women).

This result is an increase of 1.1 percentage points since 30 June 2020 when women filled 48.5 per cent of Government board positions (1,206 of 2,489 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 2016.

Portfolio results

At 30 June 2021, seven out of 13 portfolios met or exceeded the 50 per cent gender diversity target: Social Services (including Services Australia); Health; Industry, Science, Energy and Resources; Education, Skills and Employment; Prime Minister and Cabinet; Foreign Affairs and Trade; and Attorney-General’s.

Women held between 45 and 50 per cent of board positions in a further three portfolios: Defence (including the Department of Veterans’ Affairs); Agriculture, Water and the Environment; and Treasury (see Figure 1 and Table 2).

New appointments

New appointments are those appointments made over the 2020–21 financial year that were not re-appointments of the same person to the same position.

Of the 469 new appointments made in 2020–21, 52.2 per cent of appointees were women. This is an increase since the last annual report when women comprised 50.5 per cent of new appointees.

Table 3 shows in 2020–21, in nine of 13 portfolios, women represented 50 per cent or more of new appointments.

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 2021, women held 39.1 per cent of Chair and Deputy Chair positions across all Government boards. This result is 2.2 percentage points higher than the 30 June 2020 result, when women held 36.9 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 2021. This data excludes Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director and Managing Director positions.

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 64 external nominations received for Government board appointments in 2020–21, 50.0 per cent of nominations were for women (see Table 4). This is an increase of 0.8 percentage points from the 2019–20 result, when women accounted for 49.2 per cent of external nominations.