this chapter discusses women s employment in the public sector in oecd and partner countries based on empirical evidence from the oecd survey on gender in public employment and oecd research specifically it highlights employment and occupational patterns of women in the public sector their contractual arrangements and their average earnings as compared to men the influence of the economic downturn on gender equality in the public sector is also explored despite notable progress women remain overrepresented in lower pay and parttime jobs and tend to experience more frequent career breaks which may lead to lower pay positions and fewer career development opportunities to respond to the highlighted challenges the chapter identifies a set of good practices and actionable policy recommendations such as equality acts gender diversity targets and quotas family friendly policies and training programmes in the public service finally the chapter emphasises the importance of collecting good quality gender disaggregated data for developing soundpolicy solutions and outlines key policy recommendations for governments to enable equal access to opportunities in the public sector reduce the pay gap and improve working conditions