The public service risks treating efforts to combat unconscious gender bias as a "silver bullet" to achieving equity, despite studies showing they may make the problem worse, workplace researchers say.
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Agency bosses have also raised fears that training designed to reduce bias may only pay "lip service" to gender equality, the University of NSW, Canberra academics have said.
Departments are trying to stamp out unconscious bias by training staff in a push to reduce gender inequality, as men continue to hold the majority of the most senior roles in the bureaucracy and a pay gap between men and women remains.
Workplace academics Sue Williamson and Meraiah Foley, writing in the Australian Journal of Public Administration in March, have poured cold water on the popular training, calling for more research and warning its findings could echo international studies showing it backfired by entrenching gender bias.
They found in a review of 18 government departments that most using the training were not planning to measure its impact despite using it as their only strategy to fight unconscious gender bias.
While several managers at the APS feared the training paid "lip service" to gender equality, nearly all who were interviewed supported the workshops.
The new public service minister Kelly O'Dwyer has said she wants to make it easier for women to work in the APS. Sixty per cent of the federal bureaucracy's workforce are women, but men dominate in the highest-ranked and -paid levels, including executive level 2, and the senior executive service ranks.
Women in ongoing jobs increased steadily at the EL 1 level in 2017.
The Australian Public Service Commission said unconscious bias training was not alone among initiatives aimed at reducing gender inequality contained in departmental action plans to solve the problem.
Agencies were also pushing to grow the availability and take-up of flexible work, increase women in leadership positions, review recruitment practices and improve return to work arrangements after parental leave, a spokeswoman said.
The UNSW research comes after a study found women in the federal public service were still being used to do the office housework, kept out of important jobs by a "macho" culture and forced to delay having children to stay competitive for good jobs.
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet's "behavioural economics" team also warned last year that the "blind recruitment" techniques in vogue across the public service might be doing more harm than good to the job prospects of senior women.
The latest study into gender equality in the APS said there was no public information showing it had tested the impact of its anti-bias training.
"Without more robust data, agencies will continue to invest resources in such training, with limited awareness of its effectiveness," it said.
Most departments said they would conduct unconscious bias training for their staff, and of these, only three would provide the training to all employees.
Others planned to provide training to managers, or recruitment panels, and in another three agencies, the candidates for the training were unspecified.
While agencies had sent "strong signals" they were committed to equality, they needed to combine unconscious bias training with broader, ongoing and staged workplace interventions, the study found.
When asked if agencies had assessed the impact of the training, the APSC did not confirm this.
"We expect that agencies would have evaluated the impact of training they have procured," the agency said.
