CANADA
Analysis by the Public Service Commission of Canada (PCSC) has found that women in the Federal Public Service are being promoted more often than men, but mostly in administrative roles.
The PCSC also found that Indigenous workers and people with disabilities were being promoted less often than their counterparts.
The findings come from a study of all promotion data over a 13-year period, from 2005 to 2018, among all PS staff hired after 1 April 1991.
The dataset includes more than 172,000 promotions among more than 230,000 employees.
The study found women had a 4.3 per cent higher promotion rate than men, but those rates depended on the job type.
Broken down by occupational categories — administrative support, administrative and foreign service, operational, scientific and professional, and technical — women had considerably higher promotion rates than men in administrative support and administrative/foreign service.
Where their rates were considerably lower was in scientific and professional and technical fields.
Indigenous people, meanwhile, had a 7.5 per cent lower promotion rate than non-Indigenous people, and people with disabilities had a 7.9 per cent lower promotion rate than those without disabilities.
The analysis also looked at whether promotion rates improved over 27 years.
The data were broken into two specific periods (from 1 April 1991 to 31 March 2005 and from 1 April 2005 to 31 March 2018).
During both those periods, promotions for women, Indigenous people and those with disabilities improved.
However, the rate at which the latter two groups were promoted was below those of their counterparts.
The Commission’s analysis acknowledged more research was needed to understand why women were not being promoted as often in certain sectors and what factors were affecting promotion rates.
It outlined five recommendations, including reaching out to Federal Departments and Agencies to increase awareness of programs and policies to support diversity and making current programs such as the Aboriginal Leadership Development Initiative more accessible.
Ottawa, 15 May 2019
