Workplace sexual harassment is illegal. But how prevalent is it? And how costly are legal fees, lost productivity, and other consequences? We found few reliable nationwide estimates across workplaces. Experts say recurring national surveys would help answer these questions. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission collects data on sexual harassment claims but can't fully analyze the problem. Sp...

The Smithsonian Institution—the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex—has thousands of employees and supports or funds thousands of academic appointees such as interns and researchers. We looked at Smithsonian’s process for responding to sexual harassment complaints and found: Supervisors lack written guidance on addressing complaints No process for tracking complaints...

We testified about the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to ensure equal opportunity in employment at DHS. For example, DHS uses things like employee surveys to help identify potential barriers and reported some improvements in representation of minorities and women from FY 2014 through 2017. However, it lacks performance metrics for tracking its progress. Last year, we made 6 recommen...

The State Department has expressed a commitment to building a workforce that reflects the diverse composition of the United States. Though State's workforce has grown more diverse, racial or ethnic minorities are still underrepresented, particularly in the senior ranks. Racial or ethnic minorities in State’s Civil Service were 4% to 29% less likely to be promoted than their white coworkers wit...

Federal law prohibits employers from employment discrimination based on race and gender (among other things). The U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) are the primary agencies that enforce these laws. We testified about challenges these agencies face in ensuring that employers meet equal employment...

We previously reported on diversity in board directors at Federal Home Loan Banks. Now we’re looking at their efforts to diversify their workforces and companies they do business with—such as targeted recruiting in colleges and professional organizations to build a pipeline of diverse employees. In 2011–2017: the share of women in senior management at these banks increased; minority repres...

This testimony looks at trends in the diversity of financial services firms' management and potential talent pools, among other things. From 2007 through 2015, we found that Overall minority representation in management increased from 17.3% to 21% Asian representation increased from 5.4% to 7.7%. Hispanic representation had smaller gains. In contrast, African-Americans representation in managem...

The estimated percentage of minority technology workers increased from 2005 to 2015, but GAO found that no growth occurred for female and Black workers, whereas Asian and Hispanic workers made statistically significant increases (see figure). Further, female, Black, and Hispanic workers remain a smaller proportion of the technology workforce—mathematics, computing, and engineering occupations—...

Overall representation of minorities in first-, mid-, and senior-level management positions in the financial services industry increased from about 17 percent to 21 percent from 2007 through 2015. However, as shown in the figure below representation varied by race/ethnicity group and management level. Specifically, representation of African-Americans at various management levels decreased while re...

Management-level representation of minorities and women in the financial services industry and among federal financial agencies and Federal Reserve Banks (Reserve Banks) has not changed substantially from 2007 through 2011. Industry representation of minorities in 2011 was higher in lower-level management positions--about 20 percent--compared to about 11 percent of senior-level manager positions....