While the report said the pay gap was the result of Te Papa’s commercial activity expansion, and greater employment of a greater number of women in low-skilled positions, Johnston told the committee that was only a contributing factor.
“Our large casual workforce working largely in hospitality roles tends to be dominated by young women, so their pay rate compared to the permanent fulltime long-service staff is causing one of those inequities.”
The report said the gap was “an area of concern” for the museum, and further review would be undertaken over 2021 to investigate it further, with more in-depth analysis to be done on other benchmarks such as occupation and ethnicity.