Report Offers New Insights into Closing Federal Gender Gap as Marshals Service Signs on to 30x30 Initiative
The view on how women leaders see themselves and their surroundings may be the key to closing the gender gap in the federal government workforce. That’s according to a new report from the Partnership for Public Service, which is studying the issue in its LeadHERship series. For women in law enforcement, special attention has been driven toward bridging gender gaps in recent years. This data may be particularly useful in these efforts.
For the project researchers asked federal leaders and their colleagues about how they view themselves to gain insight into why the gender gap continues to exist. According to FedScope data, women made up just 39% of the Senior Executive Service (SES) through June of 2022 .
Author Nadzeya Shutava wanted to explore why the gender gap was persisting, even though the Partnership’s first report found that women overwhelmingly scored higher than their male counterparts on the leadership metrics of the Public Service Leadership 360 assessment tool, which was administered to over 2,000 federal leaders.
The Partnership explored the concept of self-efficacy, which it measured through its core leadership value of self-awareness.
The data found that “women perceive their own performance and leadership skills less favorably than others perceive them.”
In fact, others rated women higher than they rated themselves on all the core competencies: becoming self-aware, engaging others, leading change, and achieving results—and its two core values—stewardship of public trust and commitment to public good.
And while men also rated themselves lower than their peers rated them, the survey found that women are also less likely to use the word “confident” when describing themselves.
Women also expressed feelings of not belonging, which could be broadly classified under “imposter syndrome.”
Women told researchers that there were times when they felt the “difficulty of often being the only woman in the room,” and “being talked over by male colleagues.”
With these findings, Shutava writes, “It seems that the gender gap in federal leadership positions stems less from women’s underwhelming performance in those roles and more from a system and society that has historically favored and celebrated men leaders.”
She called for a series of remedies needed to bring “collective and structural change in how women are treated and recognized in the workplace.”
The report recommends that women develop self-awareness. “Developing self-awareness would lead women to recognize their own strengths more readily and accurately, and professionally develop around them.”
It recommends that women be aware of structural barriers and recognize that the work environment—and not their own knowledge or competence—may be holding them back.
The report also recommends that more women share and celebrate success stories of other women leaders to inspire a new generation.
As the report says, “By celebrating successful women leaders, we can celebrate diversity and normalize the notion of women leaders in government more broadly.”
On the law enforcement side, recent attention has been given to bridging gender gaps. NYU School of Law’s Policing Project and the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives launched the 30x30 Initiative aimed at addressing the underrepresentation of women in law enforcement.
According to the Project, women only currently make up 12 percent of all sworn officers and 3 percent of police leadership. At the Department of Justice, women make up just 16 percent of all criminal investigators. The initiative hopes to increase representation of women in policy recruit classes to 30 percent by 2030.
Most recently, the U.S. Marshals Service signed onto the initiative. This makes the Marshals Service the first federal law enforcement agency and the 200th law enforcement organization overall to sign the 30x30 pledge.
In a release announcing the decision, U.S. Marshal Service Director Ronald Davis said, “"We know diversity brings value and more women in law enforcement will strengthen law enforcement and make us responsive to the diverse needs of our communities. We look forward to this collaboration that will help us improve our organization and better equip us to respond to the challenges of the future."