This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Women are not just underrepresented in parliament, company boards and senior management – they are also missing from Australia’s international relations presence, an absence described as “detrimental to the national interest [which] hinders the achievement of our foreign policy objectives”.

While gains have been made across some commonwealth departments, a Lowy Institute review of those public service agencies which deal with how Australia is presented to and deals with the world – trade, foreign affairs, defence, attorney general, home affairs, treasury, prime minister and cabinet and the nation’s intelligence agencies – lag significantly behind.

A woman has never served as high commissioner or ambassador to key allies Indonesia, the UK, the US or Japan, while just one third of all senior diplomatic positions are women.

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Parliament’s intelligence committee, which is responsible for reviewing national security legislation, has never been helmed by a woman, and for almost half of its 21 years of existence, has sat with no women at all.

In the agencies reviewed by by Danielle Cave, Alex Oliver, Jenny Hayward-Jones, Kelsey Munro and Erin Harris for the Lowy report, women headed just 14%, compared with 50% of overall commonwealth department heads, and 31% across the entire public service.

Australia’s intelligence community was particularly weighted in favour of men, with women representing just 9% of senior executives in the Office of National Assessments in 2016, and just 24% across the defence intelligence agencies.

Women are also missing from shaping Australia’s strategic policies. Of the 33 major international relations white papers and reviews produced by the Australian government in the 51 years since the “marriage bar” was lifted for women in the public service, women have led none.

“This unadorned statistic suggests that women are not seen as strategists or strategic leaders,” the report found.

“Women do appear on the ‘advisory panels’ associated with these documents – for example, women comprised 13% of advisers to the 1997 foreign affairs white paper panel, 25% of the external reference group for the 2011 strategic review of the Treasury, and 20% of the review panel for the 2014 independent review of aid effectiveness.

“To date, however, the primary authors, formal reviewers and advisory panellists on Australian defence and intelligence reviews, including the 2016 defence white paper, the 2017 white paper, and the 2017 independent intelligence review, have all been male.”

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That trend continued into the government’s peak national security committee, which is comprised of all the departmental secretaries involved in national security.

The secretaries committee on national security has the highest proportion of women in its history – just three women out of 12: the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade head, Frances Adamson, the finance secretary, Rosemary Huxtable, and the deputy secretary of national security within prime minister and cabinet, Caroline Millar.

The report’s authors found the “low proportions of women in senior positions are not simply a hangover from the now long-since-dismantled ban on married women in the public service”.

“The evidence is clear that pathways to promotion and key placements in international postings are harder for women.”

While male-driven networks were one possible factor, women’s placement within the “softer” policy aspects of the departments also contributed. While men were more likely to serve in “hard” roles such as security, intelligence and cyber, women were more likely to be found in “feminine” roles such as human rights, development and peace.

Relocations either interstate or overseas saw men more likely to be favoured, with the authors reporting “some women have reported that they are told they will not get the jobs they want if they have children, or it will be harder to achieve management roles if they work part-time”.

Addressing the deficits from a systematic viewpoint, particularly in the intelligence community, was recommended, with the authors recommending specialised branches be established in some of the worst offenders to increase diversity.

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Institutional support, such as childcare allowances for overseas postings, and making gender balance part of a public reporting system, were also recommended.

“An unrepresentative workforce does not deliver the best value for taxpayers of the sector’s annual multibillion expenditure,” the authors concluded.

“It is not representative of Australian society, with a risk this may colour strategic decisions and policy responses. In some parts of the sector, commitment seems lacking. Having a senior cohort which is mostly male depicts a society that, despite its claims, has failed to progress socially – this is detrimental to the national interest and hinders the achievement of our foreign policy objectives.

“Finally, without faster progress, the sector will fail to take advantage of the best available talent to ensure that it has the necessary capabilities to navigate Australia’s place in an increasingly complex world.”