Bronwyn Hill’s appointment last week to my old job as permanent secretary at Defra marks a terrific achievement: 50 per cent of the 16 home government departments are now headed by women. So we had something very special to celebrate on International Women’s Day, which we marked at the Home Office yesterday with a conference kicked off by cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell and Theresa May, who is the minister for women and equalities as well as home secretary.

The Wednesday morning meeting of permanent secretaries certainly feels very different now from my early days at Defra, when for a while I was the only woman heading a department. Although my colleagues were all very welcoming, it felt pretty cut off from normal life; even from normal life elsewhere in the civil service. Now I am very proud to be one of many – and particularly proud to be the first female permanent secretary in the Home Office’s 228-year history. Even better, I am working for a female home secretary; and with a female lead non-executive director, Val Gooding.

This feels much more like the civil service I know. Although we still have some way to go, gender diversity at senior levels in the civil service is way ahead of that in the private sector. Recent figures show that just over a third of senior civil servants are women. At some departments, including the Department for Education, Department of Health and HM Treasury, the figure is more than 40 per cent. At the Government Equalities Office, now part of the Home Office, more than half of senior civil servants are female. Meanwhile, less than 15 per cent of FTSE 100 executives and non-executive directors are women; and women make up less than a quarter of parliamentarians.

On current projections, and despite the impact of downsizing, we are due to reach the 51 per cent figure for female senior civil servants by 2020. There has been a steady increase in the proportion of female SCS since 1996, when only 16.7 per cent of them were women.

Once upon a time – and within living memory – female civil servants had to resign if they got married. In the Foreign Office, the ban endured until 1972. The National Archives even has a ‘disappointed fiancée’ file, which details the female civil servants who, after they left the civil service, were jilted at the altar by their prospective husbands, and wanted their old jobs back.

Why should we care about diversity? The first reason is that we need to attract and retain the most talented staff that we can. Think of all that wasted talent among the women who had to leave when they married; think of all the talent that we miss now if we don’t reach out to more diverse groups. We also need to reflect and understand the communities we serve. That is why, for example, I was so proud that the Home Office topped the Stonewall Equality Index 2011, coming ahead of private sector employers as the number one employer for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people.

So how can we achieve gender equality? I think that it’s a combination of things; both practical and personal. First, we need to make it easy for people to flex how they work for the different stages in their lives – whether caring for children, elderly parents, or simply wanting to pursue other interests. The civil service continues to lead the employer pack in its range of flexible working options. I benefited from that myself, having worked part-time for many years as my children grew up.  

On a more personal level, I think it’s important that women can now see that other women have got to the top who have managed to balance a career with children and family life. I don’t think any of us would say we’d “had it all”. To get to the top of any profession – whether you’re a man or woman – you have to work hard and make sacrifices. But just knowing there are other women who have done it gives people confidence that they can do it too, if they want to. I certainly get lots of requests to mentor or to give talks to share my experience, and I know other senior women do too.

But let’s not forget the pioneers, and let’s thank them for their work. One heroine of mine is Dame Evelyn Sharp, a redoubtable single woman, who became the first ever female permanent secretary in 1955, and has a starring role in [cabinet minister] Richard Crossman’s diaries. She was also the first woman to gain pay equal to male permanent secretaries, negotiating it for herself ten years before female and male civil servants routinely received pay on equal terms.  

Though the statistics may rise and fall over coming years, it’s clear that women are here to stay at the top of the civil service. And looking back on our history over the last century, we should be proud of what we’ve achieved. As someone who was a student in the 1970s, I feel entitled to use the famous feminist phrase of that era: “We’ve come a long way, baby”.

Last night marked the first meeting of Tabelle, a networking group for women across the civil service. To find out more, click here.

To read more about the history of women in the civil service click here.

Written by Helen Ghosh