Racial,Gender, and Professional Diversification in the Forest Service from 1983 to 1992

The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service traditionally has been dominated by white, male for esters, particularly in its professional and leadership ranks. Beginning in the mid-1970s, however, civil rights legislation, lawsuits, and statutes that mandated interdisciplinary planning collectively impelled the agency to begin diversifying by race, gender, and profession. This study attempts to quantify the progress the agency has made in workforce diversification since the early 1980s by grouping Forest Service job series into categories and tracking changes in these categories over time. The study reveals that the numbers of employees in “nontraditional” Forest Service fields (e.g., the social and biological sciences) increased markedly, but that these employees remain vastly outnumbered by employees in traditional fields such as forestry. The number of women in the agency also increased greatly, but women made much greater gains in administrative support positions than in jobs that put them in the pipeline for leadership positions. They remain vastly overrepresented in clerical and administrative positions and highly under rep resented in professional and technical positions. People of color made gains in nearly all job categories, but, like women, remain significantly overrepresented in jobs that will not lead to leadership positions. Thus, while aggregate numbers show greater diversity in the Forest Service workforce, a more detailed analysis reveals that the leadership ranks are still the domain of white, male foresters.