Are there some other data points we should know about?

Yes – there is abundant data to illustrate how critical women are to the labor force as well as the barriers they face. For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2019, 57.4 percent of all women participated in the labor force as did 69.3 percent of all men. By industry, women accounted for more than half of all workers within several sectors: education and health services (74.8 percent), financial activities (52.6 percent), and leisure and hospitality (51.2 percent). Women also accounted for 51.8 percent of all workers in management, professional, and related occupations in 2019 with significant variance by occupation. For example, 18.7 percent of software developers, 27.6 percent of chief executives, and 36.4 percent of all lawyers were women, whereas 88.9 percent of elementary and middle school teachers, and 61.7 percent of accountants and auditors were women.

Women are also now much more likely than men to pursue higher levels of education. As of spring 2021, women made up 59.5 percent of all U.S. college students. What that means, of course, is that going forward at least 6 out of every 10 new college graduates entering the workforce will be women. From 1970 to 2019, the proportion of women ages 25 to 64 in the labor force who held a college degree quadrupled, whereas the proportion of men with a college degree just barely doubled.

Since 1970, women have become much more likely to work full time and year-round. However, women working full time earned 62 percent of what men earned in 1979 and 82 percent in 2019 – progress but still not equitable. Finally, the last two years since the Covid pandemic have had a negative – but not equal - impact on the employment of both men and women. According to a February 2022 fact sheet from the National Women’s Law Center, in the two-year period from February 2020 to February 2022, the economy experienced a net loss of 2.9 million jobs; women accounted for 63.3 percent of those losses. However, as the most recent BLS monthly jobs report shows, men have recouped all of their labor force losses since February 2020 while there are still over 1 million fewer women in the labor force in January 2022 compared to February 2020.

Who is a woman that you believe has enhanced the field of public administration? And how?

Francis Perkins, the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary in the federal government, was quite remarkable. In 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt asked her to serve as his Secretary of Labor, a position she held for 12 years until 1945 the longest that any person served in the position. That alone, would have been quite an accomplishment. However, before she would accept the job, Ms. Perkins asked for the President’s agreement that she be allowed to pursue a specific set of policy priorities: a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; unemployment compensation; worker’s compensation; abolition of child labor; direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief; Social Security; a revitalized federal employment service; and universal health insurance. The President agreed and Secretary Perkins became a driving force behind the New Deal and many of her priorities were ultimately achieved (universal health insurance being a notable exception). Following her tenure as Secretary of Labor, in 1945, Ms. Perkins was asked by President Truman to serve on the U.S. Civil Service Commission, a position she held until 1952. During those seven years, Commissioner Perkins worked tirelessly and to good effect to improve public administration within the executive branch.

The theme of Women’s History Month for 2022 is “Providing Healing, Promoting Hope,” is there a woman who you believe embodies this theme?

There are any number of women who legitimately embody this theme and while very few will ever achieve public notice, they make a very positive difference in the lives of those around them. But to answer the question, one woman who immediately comes to mind as a clear embodiment of the theme of Women’s History Month for 2022 is former first lady Michelle Obama. She has, of course, very much achieved public recognition and acclaim. This is not because she sought either but rather because she earned it through her words and actions. She serves as a role model for countless young women who see someone from a modest background who has achieve remarkable personal success while also demonstrating compassion and caring for others and a belief that there is good in the world that can overcome the evil. Notably, she stands not in the shadow of her famous husband, the former President, but by his side as an equal. Some might even suggest that she is the more equal of the two!

What steps do you think still need to be taken to achieve gender equality?

First of all, true gender equality will not simply happen on its own as the natural course of human development. It will only be achieved as a stated goal, with clear plans for how to achieve it, and contingencies in place for when those plans are derailed. More specifically:

• Where there is clear underrepresentation, there should be a stated commitment to increasing the representation of well-qualified women in the workplace, especially in management and leadership positions. This can and should be done on a merit-based basis by ensuring there are no artificial or non-merit-based barriers in the assessment and selection process and no arbitrary barriers in the workplace itself (e.g., unnecessary lack of flexibility in work hours and/or location).
  
  
• Using lessons learned over the last two years under Covid restrictions, organizations should incorporate more flexible work arrangements into an eventual post-covid environment, including remote work options where possible.
  
  
• The U.S. should join the rest of the developed world in providing greater child-care assistance to families with children. Since women tend to bear a disproportionate level of responsibility for child-care, this would obviously allow more women to bring their talents into the workplace.
  
  
• Provide employees, particularly women, with developmental opportunities and, where possible, with willing mentors who have been successful in a relevant field. Employees should be encouraged to do their part in taking full advantage of those opportunities and to demonstrate their capabilities (e.g., through temporary assignments to higher level positions).
  
  
• We should not give up on the eventual passage of an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

If you could choose any woman, dead or alive, to sit down and have dinner with, who would you choose? And what would you want to talk about?

I would choose my mother. She died too young of a heart attack at age 50 in 1968 after a life made too sad and too difficult by the mere fact that she was a woman. Her mother died giving birth to her in 1918. She was the youngest of 13 children with 11 brothers and one sister. Her father, a first-generation immigrant, held a variety of misogynistic attitudes not uncommon for his time. He pulled my mother out of school after the eighth grade so that she could help take care of him and her 11 brothers. His reasoning was that any more education was unnecessary since she would eventually get married and have a husband to take care of her.

My mother eventually did get married to a good man, my father, who did plan to fully provide for her and the five children they eventually had. He was also supportive of her plans to eventually return to school. What was unplanned was his untimely death at age 35 – leaving my mother with no job skills and meager financial resources but with five young children – including two-year-old twin daughters and six-year-old me. My mother ended up taking the only job available, a janitor at the local high school working from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (with four hours off in the middle of the day while classes were in session). She held this job for the next 21 years until her death. The pay was low and the few promotional opportunities (to supervisor) went to men. Any free time was spent raising her five children and scraping to make ends meet. She clearly loved us and did the best she knew how. She also made it clear to me, even as a young child, that I was going to go to college and get a degree. To do otherwise was not an option. I was in my junior year of college when she died in her sleep.

If I could sit down one more time with her, I would tell my mother how much I appreciate all that she sacrificed for me and my four sisters. I would also tell her that I really didn’t appreciate at the time how much greater her burden was than any I would face simply because she was a woman. Finally, I would tell her how much I wish, in retrospect, that I could have done more to ease that burden.

John joined MSPB in December 1979. He was one of the first staff members in the Board’s studies and oversight function, established by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. He served first as a senior research analyst and, from 1984, a supervisory analyst before becoming Deputy Director in 1989. Prior to joining MSPB, he was a branch chief in the Office of Personnel Management’s personnel office.

Earlier in his career, John held various positions with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, starting as a personnel management intern in 1970 in the Commission’s San Francisco Region and later serving as a personnel management advisor for Federal agencies in the four states served by the region. In 1976, he moved to Washington, DC, to become an agency officer in the Commission’s Bureau of Personnel Management Evaluation.

John received a B.A. degree in Sociology from California State University at Northridge and a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Southern California. He is active in a number of professional associations and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and a past President of the Federal Section of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA-HR).

John has received a number of honors over the years including MSPB’s highest honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Award. He also received the 2006 Warner W. Stockberger award which is the highest honor presented annually by IPMA-HR to recognize an individual who has made outstanding contributions in the field of public sector HR management.