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                          INTRODUCTION

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant growth in
the number of women employed by the Federal Government. The
percentage of white-collar, executive branch jobs held by women 
grew from 41 percent in 1974 to 48 percent in 1990. The importance
of women in the Federal workforce will continue to grow. The US.
Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the
number of women in the national workforce will increase by 26
percent between 1990 and 2005[1] and women's representation in the
Federal workforce has been increasing at a faster rate than their
representation in the national workforce.

But while women now comprise nearly half of the Federal
white-collar workforce, their distribution by grade level and
occupation remains disproportionate. Although the numbers of women
in midlevel and upper level jobs are increasing, women continue to
hold almost two-thirds of lower graded jobs (GS 1-8). While women
hold more of the Government's Professional and Administrative jobs
than ever before, they also continue to hold 86 percent of the
nearly 300,000 Clerical jobs. More importantly, women are only one-
quarter of the Government's supervisors and only 11 percent of its
senior executives.

The relatively small numbers of women in midlevel and upper level
jobs in the Government are a concern for a number of reasons. In
1978, the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) set as a standard the
recruitment of a representative workforce--an objective which,
given the extremely low percentages of women in highlevel jobs, the
Government almost certainly is not meeting. A perception on the
part of a group of citizens that they do not have equal access to
jobs which affect the development and implementation of policy can
damage the credibility of the Government in the eyes of those
citizens. Furthermore, if women are being denied the opportunity
for advancement in the Federal Civil Service, the Government is
underutilizing the potential skins of a significant portion of its
workforce. Of course, all of these concerns also apply to
minorities, who appear to be underrepresented in midlevel and upper
level jobs, as well. That is the subject of another MSPB report, to
be released in 1993.

Determining the reason for the apparent underrepresentation of
women in higher graded jobs and their overrepresentation in lower
grades and lower graded occupations is a complex task. Should the
maldistribution be attributed to illegal discrimination based on
sex, or to women not choosing to take the steps required to advance
in the Federal Civil Service system? Have women not progressed as
far as men because they have fewer years of Government service and
less formal education, or are less committed to a career than their
male colleagues? Or are there externally imposed barriers that
block the advancement of women into supervisory and management
levels? These are the questions that this study was designed to
answer.

Prior Research

Several studies have examined the issue of whether women have the
same opportunities as men for advancement into management positions
in the public and private sectors. Some of these studies have
indicated that the issue is not one of overt discrimination, but
that women face real, yet very subtle barriers that men do not.
Several years ago, the term "glass ceiling" was coined to describe
these barriers; women can see their way to the top of the career
ladder, but bump into an invisible barricade when they try to make
the climb.
 
Outside the Federal Government. In September of 1988, the (Canadian
Public Service Commission established the Task Force on Barriers to
Women in the Public Service to analyze the poor representation of
women in the senior ranks of the Canadian civil service. The
comprehensive analysis by the task force, completed in 1990,
identified policies and practices that were having an adverse
impact on women and their opportunities for advancement. The task
force also determined that the nature of the barriers a woman
encounters and the extent to which these barriers are a factor
varies depending on the type of work she does. But, the report
concluded, "It is clear, however, that the most significant
barriers derive from attitudes."[2] These attitudes include
stereotyping of women and "their place" in the public service,
skepticism about their abilities, and a tendency on the part of
women to underreport their own accomplishments.[3]

In August of 1991, the US. Department of Labor released the results
of its pilot study of the recruitment and promotion practices of
nine Fortune 500 companies. The study indicated that women and
minorities are not getting to the top in the corporate world
because of informal policies and practices which have the
inadvertent effect of excluding them from consideration for
top-level jobs. Furthermore, the report said that practices which
have the effect of reducing the promotion potential of women and
minorities begin early in their careers. For example, women and
minorities are more often steered into staff rather than line
positions when line positions are those which provide the "fast
track" to the top.[4]

The Federal Civil Service. Providing a "Federal work force
reflective of the Nation's diversity" became the official policy of
the United States with the passage of the Civil Service Reform Act
in 1978. The act also called for eliminating the
underrepresentation of women and minorities in all occupations and
at all grade levels in the Federal Government.[5] The issue of 
whether these objectives have been reached, and if not, why not,
has been the subject of several studies since that time.

Some of the studies have analyzed differences in promotion rates
between men and women using data from the Central Personnel Data
File (CPDF) maintained by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
One such study concluded that the number of women employed in
grades GS 9-12 had remained largely unchanged since passage of the
CSRA, but there had been a significant increase in the number of
women employed in grades GS/ GM 13-15.[6] Another researcher
concluded that, for the most part, the scarcity of women in upper
level jobs could be attributed to their having less formal
education and fewer years of Government service and being
concentrated in lower graded occupations than men.[7] Although
there was a gap between the grades of men and women with the same
amount of formal education, the gap had declined during the
1970's.[8] However, an analysis of the increase in employment of
women since 1978 in grades GS/GM 13 and above shows that if the
rate of increase was unchanged, it would take 45 years for women to
be fully represented in those grades.[9]

The US. General Accounting Office (GAO) has also examined the
effectiveness of affirmative employment policies, in response to
requests from Members of Congress. Over the last several years, GAO
has issued a number of reports concerning the underrepresentation
of women and minorities in specific agencies. More recently, its
Governmentwide analysis identified weaknesses in the oversight of
Federal agency affirmative action programs performed by the U.S.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Complicating analysis of whether women are fully represented in a
particular occupation or specific grade level is the issue of what
constitutes "full representation." Is it fair to say that since
women are nearly half of the workforce, they should make up half of
senior managers? What if there are not sufficient numbers of women
qualified to be senior managers?

One of the tasks GAO undertook was to find an adequate benchmark by
which to measure representation. The EEOC requires Federal agencies
to compare representation of women and minorities in their own
workforces to decennial census data regarding where women and
minorities are employed in the nationwide civilian workforce. But
GAO noted in its testimony to Congress in October 1991 that
different ways of measuring representation in the comparable
civilian labor force can produce different representation indexes.

For example, using 1980 census data based on broad occupational
categories shows that white women are severely underrepresented as
criminal investigators in the Department of Justice, while 1980
census-based, occupation-specific data showed women as fully
represented as criminal investigators at the same department.[10] 

In other words, there is no one way to adequately and uniformly
determine whether the representation of women at upper grade levels
or in specific occupations is as it should be. Despite these
limitations, however, GAO agreed with a statement by the then
director of OPM, Constance Newman, who said, "*** the percentages
of women and minorities in the [senior executive service] and the
pipeline to the SES are unacceptable."[11]

                    Focusing on the Barriers

Rather than enter the debate as to what the percentage of women in
upper grades should be, we chose to focus on whether there are
barriers confronting women who are trying to advance in the
Government. Prior research has indicated that these barriers exist
and that they can be complex and varied, ranging from differences
in qualifications such as education and experience to subtle
attitudes, stereotypes and expectations. Our study was designed to
examine the range of possible barriers in an effort to identify
those which most restrict the advancement of women in the Federal
civil service.