While women remain under-represented in managerial and senior executive positions compared with their share in the overall workforce, the numbers are trending up, OPM has said.
Data culled from last year’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey showed that among managers and supervisors between ages 25 and 34, 43.5 percent were women, slightly higher than the 43.3 percent overall portion of the workforce.
Women now make up 34 percent of the SES ranks, which is above the comparable 14.6 percent figure in the private sector, OPM said, although still well below the overall share of the federal workforce. Women meanwhile remain substantially under-represented in the STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—occupations in the federal workforce, although those gaps too are narrowing.
The federal government is more male than the entire American workforce, however, which is 46 percent female. In addition, the female share of the federal workforce has slipped by several percentage points in recent years, a trend MSPB in a report issued last year attributed in part to the increased emphasis on hiring veterans, four-fifths of whom are men. OPM recently announced an initiative aimed at hiring more women veterans as part of the Council on Veterans Employment.