Valuing skills : helping mainstream gender equity in the New Zealand state sector

The state sector has led slow progress towards pay and employment equity in Anglophone countries. Horizontal and vertical job segregation have, however, proved intractable barriers to closing the gap fully. An under-researched element of the solution may involve examining whether skill levels are accurately reflected in the low pay and flat career structures of occupations and part-time jobs where women and ethnic minorities are concentrated. This is a public policy issue, requiring that systemic reviews of pay and employment equity include skill reassessments. It has so far been mainly a public administration issue, because of the state sector's vanguard role in equity reviews. Against a backdrop of equality initiatives in the UK and other Anglophone countries, we focus on the pay and employment equity review process in Aotearoa-New Zealand between 2004 and 2008. Here a mainstreaming approach has been adopted, `making gender equity ordinary' by providing tools for reviews of pay and employment opportunity and for remedies such as job re-evaluation. Our focus is on the potential contribution to this agenda of skill reassessments. We outline the research-based development of a toolkit to help classify the under-recognized social and organizational skills required in jobs where women are concentrated, from low-paid `support' roles to policy advice. This skills taxonomy can also help identify the progressive deepening of these skills through problem-solving practice — an identification that may assist in defining career pathways. We conclude with an equity and business case for `mainstreaming' its use.