Chief says Crown law gender pay gap figures misleading

Crown Law chief executive Una Jagose has hit back against criticism that the agency has one of the largest gender pay gaps in the public sector.

A recent Stuff report, which referenced a 30% gender pay gap at Crown Law, said that “women looking to work in the public sector should be wary of jobs in Defence and Crown Law.” The publication was referring to data from the State Services Commission’s report on the public sector workforce.

“Crown Law has a strong culture of supporting women.  I am committed to ensuring that all of our staff are paid fairly regardless of gender,” Jagose said. “The 30% figure reported in the stuff article is not particularly useful or meaningful in understanding Crown Law’s gender pay position.”

She said that Crown law has both legal and administrative workforces. The generally lower-paid administrative workers are predominantly women, skewing the average pay of women at Crown Law.

“We do also have a higher proportion of men in the very senior legal roles and, again, this impacts the overall average. We expect this to change as more of our women progress into these roles. This is already happening – women make up the majority of our workforce, and over half our managers are women,” she said. “For almost all of our roles there is no difference in the average pay of women and men. Women and men doing the same role at Crown Law should be, and in most cases already are being, paid at the same level.”

Jagose said that while there are some gender pay issues in the organisation, it is working hard to address those.

“Any implication that we pay men 30% more for doing the same job as women is simply false. That is something I would never stand for,” she said. “The expertise of all staff at Crown Law is highly valued. Women and men looking for excellent, challenging careers should consider Crown Law as an employer of choice and they will all be paid fairly regardless of gender.”


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