The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

40 MAY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL for women who wield influence within the organization; and incomplete talent strategies that fail to give women the breadth of experience necessary for senior assignments. (It should also be noted that female candidates with the needed qualifications often fail to throw their hats into the ring.) The current situation has important implications for State, where it is clear we have yet to fully utilize the talent of women in our ranks. The Strategic Imperative for Gender Diversity For starters, it is high time we took a cue from the busi- ness world, which has made maximizing women’s talents an imperative. Corporations are keenly aware of the need to recoup their significant investment in hiring and training women by ensuring they retain them. They are also interested in benefiting from the superior decisions that research has shown emerge from diverse organizations, and in developing sustainable work models for a world in which female partici- pation in the work force will surely continue to increase. These organizations are also responding to a generational shift that has seen the coming of age of a younger work force with differing notions about work and life. Men increasingly want to play a greater role in the home, and are joining female colleagues in voicing the need for more flexible workplace models and more balance. Interestingly, companies with a large number of female employees who initially lacked diversity policies are the ones who have led the charge for creating these new workplace models. After determining that not having these policies was sorely hurting their bottom line in terms of high attrition and low employee engagement, these companies have been at the forefront of new efforts to carefully unearth the internal factors that can impede progress by women (as well as other groups) and develop thoughtful policies to overcome them. In other Service Act of 1980. Those efforts have paid dividends in terms of attracting more diverse candidates, who are then evalu- ated by Board of Examiner assessors who themselves reflect America’s diversity. Thanks to these measures, the Foreign Service has nearly achieved gender parity in terms of new hires. Staff members in the Office of Civil Rights conduct Equal Employment Oppor- tunity training worldwide and address cases of employment discrimination, supported by Foreign Service staff in our embassies, who take on EEO responsibilities as collateral duty. Our yearly employee evaluations are screened for discrimina- tory language and our promotion precepts demand compli- ance with EEO principles. With these measures in place, it would seem that women are being evaluated on the basis of merit alone and have a fair shot at grabbing the brass ring. Yet promotion into the Senior Foreign Service remains elusive for far too many female FSOs. In an effort to find out why, I applied for an Una Chap- man Cox Sabbatical Leave Fellowship. My overseas tours had driven home the extent to which women in other countries are being held back from achieving their full potential, and my return to Washington three years ago seemed the ideal time to research the policies and practices used by American employ- ers of choice to propel women to the leadership ranks. A far more complex picture emerged than I had first imagined. While it is indisputable that outright discrimination is no longer tolerated, and that some women appear to have found the right formula to shatter the glass ceiling, senior leaders of organizations in nearly all sectors of American life continue to be predominantly male. The unimpeded rise to the top of talented women that many expected has simply not occurred. Experts in women’s advancement agree that the three primary factors holding women back are insufficient work- life integration programs; the dearth of executive sponsors The Foreign Service has nearly achieved gender parity in terms of new hires. But the picture at the top is less bright.