Gender Equity In The Federal Workforce

Author : Teresa Kroeger
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (144 download)

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Download or read book Gender Equity in the Federal Workforce written by Teresa Kroeger and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unequal pay and occupational segregation by gender are persistent and pernicious features of the United States labor market that policymakers and labor advocates have sought to eliminate. The federal government is the largest employer in the country, and it utilizes hiring procedures and pay structures designed to ensure equitable employment outcomes. Rigid pay-setting mechanisms largely standardize pay by leaving little room for the discretion of hiring managers. Despite formalized pay practices, researchers have documented evidence of gender pay gaps and occupational segregation in the federal workforce. Less understood is how these inequities persist given the rigidity of pay-setting in the federal workforce and the extent of inequities over time. This dissertation examines the persistence of gender earnings and employment inequity in the modern federal workforce. The research establishes a more thorough understanding of the earnings and employment status of women in the federal workforce and how it has changed since the influx of women into the paid labor force. It dissects how much of the difference in men's and women's average earnings can be attributed to discrimination, and how pay inequity persists within rigid federal pay systems. The analysis examines the extent to which federal workers are disproportionately sorted by gender between occupations and agencies, as well as the extent of gender sorting within and between pay systems. Labor economics models explain persistent gender pay gaps arising from disparities in earnings determinants (i.e., differences in human capital endowments), occupational segregation (i.e., women sorted into low-paying occupations), discriminatory practices (i.e., gender pay differences for comparable work), or some combination of the above. This study empirically employs these models in the context of the modern federal workforce and considers additional mechanisms of gender pay inequity unique to the federal sector. The analysis combines multiple sources of federal personnel microdata from the Central Personnel Data File (CPDF) to create a novel dataset on federal civilian workers from 1973 to 2013. It uses log earnings regressions and Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions to determine the magnitude and pervasiveness of gender pay gaps in the federal workforce, and the differential impacts of various demographic, human capital, and administrative variables on gender pay gaps across pay systems, occupations, and agencies. Indexes of dissimilarity measure the amount of gender segregation between occupations and agencies, the extent to which it varies between pay systems, and how it has changed over 41 years. Earnings regressions estimate the pay implications of gender-based employment segregation in different pay systems of the federal workforce from 1973 to 2013. Unexplained differences in average earnings between men and women emerge in all gender and racial groups and in every year from 1973 to 2013, with substantial variation by pay system. Women of color make the most progress in overall employment gains over the period, but their increased entrance into the federal workforce does not translate to greater pay equity. Women in the largest pay system, General Schedule (GS) and equivalently graded pay plans, are employed one pay grade lower than equivalent men on average across the period. Workers on blue collar pay plans have the smallest unexplained gender pay gaps throughout the period, yet also experience a deterioration of real earnings and pay equity over time. Agencies--comprised of smaller organizational units, called bureaus--employ workers across occupations. Federal workers are highly gender segregated between occupations, and less likely to be gender segregated between bureaus. Gender-based occupational segregation improves in the federal sector through the 2000s; however, by 2013, rates of occupational segregation are higher for workers in other white collar (other than GS) and blue collar pay plans than they are for private sector workers. Occupations with greater shares of women in their workforce pay lower earnings, on average, to both men and women on their payrolls. Occupation and bureau segregation have lessened since 1973, but they still contribute to the gender pay gap for most federal workers as of 2013. Employment segregation is a substantial contributor to gender pay inequity in the federal workforce. Analyses cannot rule out that federal gender pay inequity is driven by practices that discriminate against women's work. Regardless of the motivation for the above findings, the federal government sets standards for the broader labor market, and its policies have significant implications for the economic status of millions of workers across the nation.