Women in government are slightly less satisfied than men

Women in the federal government report slightly less workplace satisfaction than their male colleagues, according to a new analysis by the Partnership for Public Service and Deloitte.

Of female respondents, 66.1 percent reported overall satisfaction with the workplace compared with 67.9 percent of male respondents, the analysis found. Categories included skills-mission match, pay, teamwork, work-life balance, training and development, support for diversity, strategic management, effective leadership and rewards and advancement. Women were slightly more satisfied overall than men in one category: skills-mission match.

The analysis was based on the Office of Personnel Management's 2010 employee survey, which included more than 27,000 managers and executives -- 33.5 percent were women and 65.9 percent were men.

The analysis found the largest gap between women and men existed in how they perceived effective leadership, particularly in the empowerment and fairness subcategories. Across government, men rated the overall effective leadership category higher than women did, giving that area a score of 57.1 versus a score of 54.6 from women.

"Women gave lower ratings on all four empowerment and fairness questions, but they gave the lowest scores, compared with men, on the question about fear of reprisal for disclosing suspected violations," the report said. Between the genders, there was a difference of 4.6 points on the perception of fairness in the workplace and a 4.4 point difference in the perception of empowerment.

John Palguta, vice president of policy at the Partnership, said he would advise chief human capital officers to look into differences among occupation tracts and grade levels to see if that yields any insight into why there is a gap in perception related to empowerment. "And then I'd want to ask my employees: Why do we have this difference in perception?" he said, adding, "I do think we should not overlook the good news."

The gaps in perception of empowerment and fairness decrease slightly the higher women rise in government. As more women become federal managers, however, a new challenge emerges: work-life balance. Among staff surveyed, men and women reported nearly the same levels of satisfaction regarding work-life balance (62.4 percent versus 62.2 percent), but that figure widened when managers were surveyed. Sixty percent of men expressed satisfaction, while 57.7 percent of women reported contentment with work-life balance.

Separately, the Merit Systems Protection Board released a report to the president and Congress on Tuesday that found women now occupy about 30 percent of positions in the Senior Executive Service, up 19 percent since 1990. "Although this progress is commendable, women remain less likely than men to be employed in high-paying occupations and supervisory positions," the report said.

Palguta said he believes that as more women become managers and SES members, the differences in perception between men and women, particularly with respect to effective leadership in the workplace, will narrow further.

Ironically, the Partnership and Deloitte found that one of the widest gaps between how men and women viewed empowerment and fairness in the workplace (7.5 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively) existed at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is responsible for enforcing laws against workplace discrimination. "We have not seen the report in its entirety, so we cannot comment," EEOC Communications Director Charles Robbins said in a statement. "However, we have received the results of the 2010 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey of EEOC employees and, as always, take those results seriously and will continue to use them to make the EEOC a better workplace."

The smallest gaps in the empowerment and fairness subcategories were reported by employees at the Homeland Security, Justice and Transportation departments, as well as NASA, OPM, and the General Services Administration.