Women have made significant inroads in the federal public service, according to a new Statistics Canada report released Monday, which found the number of female workers has been increasing steadily from 1995 to 2006.
In fact, women have outnumbered men within the federal public service, or Core Public Administration (CPA) since 1999, the government agency reported Monday.
While men still outnumber women in the workplace, the gap between the proportion of employed male and female workers has been narrowing slowly.
In 1995, nearly 46 per cent of employed Canadians were women. By 2006, this proportion had grown to over 47 per cent.
In contrast, women accounted for 54 per cent of all CPA employees in 2006, up from only 46 per cent in 1995.
Further, more men than women left the federal public service between the years 1995 and 1997.
However, the trend reversed itself after 1998 and more women have been leaving the service since then.
Still, there were continuously more female than male employees entering the CPA between March 1995 and March 2006.
The study also found that there are slightly fewer federal employees but that public servants are generally more knowledge-based than they were in the mid-1990s.
In March 2006, just over 380,700 people were working for the federal government, showing a slight decrease from nearly 382,000 in March 1995.
During this 11-year timeframe, the number of federal employees fell to a low of about 326,500 in March 1999. The employment rate then rebounded at an average annual growth rate of 2.2 per cent.
"The technological evolution of the working environment has had an impact on the federal government. After a small initial dip, there has been a steady increase in the number of employees in knowledge-based occupational categories and a clear decline among those not in such categories," Statistics Canada said.
In 2006, the proportion of knowledge-based staff, such as scientific and professional workers and those in computer systems, had risen to 58 per cent of core federal employees after comprising just 41 per cent during the mid-1990s.
About 102,700 employees worked in knowledge-based categories in 2006, up about 25,400 from 77,300 in 1995.
Meanwhile, the proportion of employment in the less knowledge-based occupational categories has fallen since 1995.
"They comprise the group of workers who left the federal government en masse between 1995 and 1999," Statistics Canada said.
Employment in the less knowledge-based occupational categories dropped by a little over 35,600, from 106,000 in 1995 to just over 70,600 in 2006.
The government agency also reported that the average age of public servants is rising and they are older on average than Canadian workers as a whole.
"The aging work force and looming retirement of the baby boomers has been a topic of increased concern in the past few years. These workers may play a key role in transferring the institutional memory as their experience and skill in occupations may be essential to the knowledge-based economy," Statistics Canada said.
While the median age of all workers throughout the labour force has been rising, it is considerably higher for men and women in the federal public service.
Among women female public servants, the median age rose from 40 in 1995 to 44 in 2006; while it went from 44 to 46 among their male counterparts.
In the work force as a whole, the median age among employed women rose from 37 in 1995 to 40 in 2006; while it went from 38 to 40 among men.
Within the federal public service, workers aged 45 and over accounted for 52 per cent of the total in 2006, compared with just under 39 per cent in the work force as a whole.
