The Impact of Sexual Harassment on the Federal Workforce Leaky Pipeline

• In Event: Conflict and Changes in the U.S and Abroad

Abstract

While women and people of ethnically/racially underrepresented identities have made strides in representation in the Federal bureaucracy, there are disproportionately fewer women of color in leadership positions compared to White men (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2022). In 2020, African American women made up 11.7% of Federal civilian employees but only “10.4% of supervisors, 9.6% of managers, and 7.3% of executives” (EEOC, 2023, p.3). Nelson & Piatak (2021) found similar representation numbers in their study using the Federal Employee Viewpoints Survey. African American women also resigned at a 3% rate—higher than the overall employee average (EEOC, 2023). If representative bureaucracy theory is accurate, it is important to have individuals of underrepresented identities in leadership roles to better serve the public and underrepresented constituents (Keiser et al., 2002; Krislov, 1974; Davis et al., 2011; Meier, 2019). This scholarship uses an intersectional lens to examine what may contribute to the “leaky pipeline”: the inequitable drop-off in the representation of women of color from non-leadership to leadership positions (Pell, 1996).

Leaky pipeline discussions often highlight external issues for women to leave their positions before achieving leadership roles – such as raising children. This article contributes to the literature on internal barriers that women of color face within agencies (see for example, Uttermark et al. 2023). Specifically, whether observing or experiencing sexual harassment in the federal workplace leads women of color to leave before they achieve leadership positions. Sexual harassment is defined by the EEOC as any “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature” (EEOC, n.d., para. 1). Women file the majority of sexual harassment complaints; however, women of color have been overrepresented in these complaints compared to white women (Hernandez, 2001). Hernandez (2001) reviewed EEOC complaints filed from 1992 through 1999 and found that “sexual harassers target White women as victims at disproportionately lower rates than women of color” (Hernandez, 2001, p. 187). Cassino and Besen-Cassino (2019) found that from 1997 through 2016 overall sexual harassment claims decreased, but “African-American women experience[ed] an increased relative risk of sexual harassment in the workplace” (p. 1221) compared to White women. Experiencing or witnessing sexual harassment may lead women of color to have higher resignation rates.

Finally, we ask whether sexual harassment prevention training helps patch the leaky pipeline and improve the likelihood of women of color staying in federal employment through promotion. As leaky pipeline research frequently focuses on the education and STEM fields (see Blickenstaff, 2005, Liu et al., 2019, and Pell 1996 for examples), this research is novel in its focus on the public sector as well as the impact of sexual harassment in the workplace on individuals of intersecting underrepresented identities.

Leveraging several waves of the Merit Principles Survey, we use polychoric factor analysis to construct a measure of sexual harassment rates faced by federal bureaucrats within their workplace. Employing fixed effects models, we find that 1); sexual harassment in the workplace positively correlates with the propensity for employees to exiting – particularly for women of color; 2); that employees who received sexual harassment training are significantly less likely to consider leaving agencies with low or moderate rates of sexual harassment; and 3); that sexual harassment training provides the strongest decrease in exiting for women of color. Finally, among the various training offered by federal agencies, we find evidence that in-person training over one hour in length provides the greatest benefit in retaining employees.

Authors

• Matthew Joseph Uttermark, University of Florida

• Lauren Dula