Next year's intake will include 21 women and 19 men, deputy secretary Meghan Quinn told Senate estimates on Wednesday under questioning from Labor Senator Jenny McAllister.

While the department's workforce has a 50-50 gender split, women represent just 39 per cent of staff at senior executive service level.

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Ms Quinn said the original number of job offers made as part of the 2019 graduate intake were "much more balanced on gender grounds", but as some offers hadn't been taken up and they were then offered to others, the gender imbalance occurred.

"We did have a look at the outcomes of that and realised it wasn't something we supported at the executive board level and there was a very clear-eyed focus on the recruitment process for 2020 to make sure we could ensure the same thing didn't happen again," Ms Quinn said.

Senator McAllister asked if Treasury's senior leadership was still committed to the Progressing Women Initiative, as the current strategy had been written in 2017 and no information had been uploaded to the department's website since then.

"There's been no step back from the progressing women initiative" Ms Quinn said in response.

Senator McAllister asked if there were any cultural issues around gender the department was seeking to address, and was told there were measures in place to increase the ability for people to work part time or flexibly, training around unconscious bias, a focus on work allocation and job focus as well as a review of remuneration and opportunities.

Ms Quinn said the department's focus was similar to what other departments and the private sector were looking at.