Health Service Managers in Australia Part 2: age and sex characteristics

Abstract

This article is the second in a four-part series in which the authors provide analyses on the composition and characteristics of health service managers in Australia of relevance to policy and decision-making in dealing with the future of health service labour force in general and health service management in particular. The first article presented analyses on the specific characteristics of service, geographical and category distribution. This second article provides analyses on age and sex characteristics of health service managers in Australia. Findings confirm that the health services labour force was older than the labour force at large at the time of the 2006 Census of Population and that health service managers were also older than those in all industries. The age distribution of managers in health services showed skewness towards younger ages. As expected, those in senior positions tended to be older. Managers in aged care residential services were even older on average, following the older average age of the labour force in these services. In general, female managers tended to be younger than male managers. There was not much difference in the average age of health service managers among the states and territories. The same was the experience in aged care residential services. In a labour force where females were predominant, the majority of managers in health services and aged care residential services were also females. However, their proportion of managers was lower than their proportion in the labour force of these two services. Further, the gap between the proportion of females in the labour force and the proportion of managers was larger in health services and especially aged care residential services than that in all industries. The gap became larger when the positions of chief executive officer and general manager were considered. The article also discusses a number of related policy issues and suggests an agenda for future research.