While women continue to be better represented in the public sector than in private companies, they remain underrepresented in top jobs. Senior partner Nora Gardner and colleagues find that women are close to or above parity from the entry level to cabinet and department leader roles in the public sector, but they remain underrepresented in the most senior positions, such as in the secretary’s or governor’s office and in legislature or oversight jobs.
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A bar graph shows the breakdown of public- and social-sector employees by race and gender and level of position held in the industry, as a percentage share of total. Overall, women within the sector show better-than-average representation when compared with all companies, with a percentage point difference of +3 for frontline supervisors, +4 for midlevel managers, +10 for divisional leaders, +17 for department or agency top team, +25 for cabinet leaders and department heads, +7 for secretary or governor’s office, and +1 for legislature or oversight.
Note: Figures may not sum to 100%, because of rounding. Total percent of women and men per level in the race and gender pipeline may not sum to overall corporate pipeline totals because the race pipeline does not include employees with unreported race data. Pipeline data in this report are based on data from the end of 2021 and do not reflect changes through 2022.
Footnote 1: Aggregate results from participating organizations in public and social sector as of end of year 2021 (16 organizations submitted pipeline data; sample size of 317,157 employees with C-suite sample size of 679).
Source: Women in the Workplace 2022 pipeline data for the US and Canada.
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To read the article, see “Making government an even better place for women to work,” May 25, 2023.