Overall Government results

At 30 June 2022, there were 335 Australian Government Boards with 2,214 filled positions. Women filled 51.4 per cent of all board positions (1,138 positions were filled by women).

This result is an increase of 1.8 percentage points since 30 June 2021 when women filled

49.6 per cent of Government board positions (1,149 of 2,315 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.

Table 1: Gender balance on Australian Government boards as at 30 June, from 2016 to 2022

Portfolio results

At 30 June 2022, six out of 13 portfolios met or exceeded the 50 per cent gender diversity target:

• Social Services (including Services Australia)
• Health
• Attorney-General’s
• Education, Skills and Employment
• Foreign Affairs and Trade, and
• rime Minister and Cabinet.

Women held between 45 and 50 per cent of board positions in the remaining eight portfolios (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 2022, by portfolio

New appointments

New appointments are those appointments made over the 2021-22 financial year that were not reappointments of the same person to the same position.

Of the 682 new appointments made in 2021-22, 54.4 per cent of appointees were women. This is an increase of 2.2 percentage points since the last annual report when women comprised 52.2 per cent of new appointees.

Table 3 shows at 30 June 2022, in eight of 13 portfolios, women represented 50 per cent or more of new appointments.

Table 3: Gender balance of new appointments in 2021-22, by portfolio