The Foreign Service Journal, June 2008

12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 8 I n 1971, the year Foreign Service officer Alison Palmer won her sex discrimination case against the Department of State, just 1.6 percent of the FS corps was female. Thanks in large part to that settlement and other lawsuits filed during the decade, women began to enter the Service in record numbers in the late 1970s, a trend that has continued. Given that progress, one would expect to see large numbers of female officers at the top. The promotion statistics have greatly improved since December 1985, when just 3 percent of senior officers were female, but half of all women still leave the Foreign Service before they reach the senior ranks. Here are the State Department’s own data on the per- centage of females at each grade in the Foreign Service generalist work force, as of Jan. 31, 2008: Career Minister 26.7 Minister Counselor 27.4 Officer Counselor 28.1 FS-1 36.7 FS-2 33.6 FS-3 40.9 FS-4 42.9 FS-5 50.3 FS-6 42.9 TOTAL 38.0 What accounts for this disturbing loss of our best and brightest, and what can we do about it? A Dark and Dismal Track Record Our institutional history is full of ghosts. As late as 1922, two years before the Rogers Act created the modern Foreign Service, the State Department considered not allowing any women to join as officers (even though few were seeking entry). From the start, women who got in were discouraged from aspiring to the senior ranks. It also bears repeating, because so many new officers find it incomprehensible, that until 1972, female Foreign Service officers were forced to resign if they married. Then there was the sexual harass- ment, which continued to run ram- pant in the Foreign Service at least through the 1980s, and remains a prob- lem. Management mostly pretended not to see it, but I witnessed behavior so despicable it can hardly be de- scribed in print. I still recall what hap- pened when a high-ranking Washing- ton-based officer visited Tokyo, where he had recently held a senior job. On the day he arrived, every female Foreign Service National employee stayed home to protest his miscon- duct with female employees during his tour. Equally troubling is the fact that, with few exceptions, women have remained quiet about mistreatment. One can understand how individuals might be afraid to speak out, but where are their advocates? The Association of Women Foreign Ser- vice Officers and the Women’s Action Organization, so active in the 1970s, both disbanded or disappeared quiet- ly long ago. (See Barbara Good’s arti- cle in the January 1981 Foreign Ser- vice Journal for a history of WAO’s achievements and the reluctance of women to speak out to achieve parity.) This collective silence, too often mis- interpreted as “loyalty,” still lingers, to our detriment and that of our chosen profession. The historical record is not entire- ly gloomy, to be sure. Ann Wright’s rich article, “Breaking Through Diplo- macy’s Glass Ceiling” (October 2005 FSJ ), documents many breakthroughs for female diplomats. Even so, in most gatherings of Senior Foreign Service officers today, men still out- number women three to one. So I repeat: Where are all the senior women? Where Have All the Senior-Level Women Gone? B Y S USAN C RAIS H OVANEC S PEAKING O UT Women are entering the Foreign Service in large numbers, but few make it to the top.