Gender, Race and Training in the Federal Civil Service

Abstract

ABSTRACT Responses 1991 Survey of Federal Employees indicate less racial and sexual inequality in training opportunities than found in previous studies. Despite concerns expressed in Merit Systems Protection Board's Glass Ceiling report, access mentoring and development assignments did not vary much among black and white men and women. Indeed, among professional and administrative employees, black women were more likely than white men receive both. Higher percentages of white males than others received management training and attended professional conferences and seminars but their advantage appears arise primarily from their concentration in higher grade levels where such training is most common. Among comparably educated and experienced employees at same grade levels, black men were most likely receive management training and women were most likely attend professional conferences. Women's limited access management training, even among well qualified professionals and administrators, remains a problem. INTRODUCTION Training not only improves quality of nation's workforce, it powerfully affects earnings of individual workers.l Mincer (1962) indicates that employers' investments in job training were as important as formal education in explaining earnings variation among individuals. Employers generally, and federal government in particular, provided unprecedented levels of training their employees in 1980s (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 1992). While most elsewhere received bulk of their training prior commencing employment, federal employees were the only class of workers in which significantly higher than average proportions qualified for their current jobs through company training programs (BLS, 1992). Between 1983 and 1991, federal service provided training necessary perform their current jobs 2.2 million employees (67 percent of its workforce). In 1987 (one of last years U.S. Office of Personnel Management [OPM] maintained centralized training cost records), federal service spent over $600 million on employee training, an average of $1900 per employee trained (Havemann, 1987). These millions of training dollars have potential improve relative status of female and minority employees in federal service, but do they? A 1989 survey of federal indicated that 16 percent felt that to no extent had they been treated fairly with regard training in past two years although women were slightly more likely than men think that they had been treated fairly (MSPB, 1989). Between 1985 and 1992, federal employees filed over 7,000 complaints with U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging discrimination in training. The number of training-related complaints nearly tripled between 1987 and 1992 (EEOC, 1993). U.S. Civil Service Commission (CSC) data for 1977 revealed that white males were more likely than other groups receive training and that training they received cost more and lasted longer (Taylor, 1986). This article examines whether federal government has made progress toward racial and sexual equality in training of its employees by focusing on five types of training likely raise people into upper-level professional and managerial positions: management training, professional conferences and seminars, college courses, mentoring, and developmental assignments. Because OPM no longer collects centralized data on training costs, authors use employees' reports of their recent training from its 1991 Survey of Federal Employees (SOFE) explore how black and white men and women vary in their access training. After reviewing previous research in this area, authors test several hypotheses about racial and sexual differences in federal training after controlling for backgrounds and current positions of employees. …

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