Nearly 60 per cent of federal public servants are women, but only 41 per cent of the APS elite senior executive service are female.

Women are twice as likely as men to have temporary jobs with the service and eight times more likely to work part-time.

Female public servants also remain over-represented among the lower-paid APS classifications.

More than half the men working full-time in the public service are at executive level or higher while fewer than a quarter of the full-time women staff are in the more highly paid jobs, an analysis of official data shows.

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The picture is brighter further up the corporate ladder as women approach numerical parity with their male colleagues at the middle management EL level.

Bureau figures show 997 of the public service's 2390 senior executives in 2015 were women.

"In line with the long-term trend since 2001, the proportion of women senior executive managers in the Australian Public Service grew from 40.5 per cent in 2014 to 41 per cent in 2015, despite the ongoing decrease in total numbers since 2012," the bureau noted.

ABS director of family and community statistics Lisa Conolly said the Australian Public Service was showing a gradual upward trend for women in leadership positions.

Australian Public Service Commission figures show, since 1996, women's representation has almost doubled at EL2 and SES band 1 and tripled at SES band 2.

SES band 3 representation has increased five-fold.