These offices will be established in the 10 Departmental Offices of the Department of the Treasury; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve Regional Banks; the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve; the National Credit Union Administration; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; the Securities and Exchange Commission and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Thesy will be responsible for promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic and gender diversity not only in the agency’s workforces, but also in those of its contractors and sub-contractors. The mission of these offices is to assure “to the maximum extent possible the fair inclusion of women and minorities, individually and through businesses they own, in the activities of the agencies, including contracting.”

In addition, the measure includes the requirement that “each agency shall take affirmative steps to seek diversity in the workforce of the agency at all levels of the agency.” FEW’s National Vice President for Diversity Georgia Thomas cited this language as particularly relevant to federally employed women. “FEW has been working on gender discrimination issues since its inception in 1968,” Thomas asserted. “Obviously the suggested actions of recruiting at historically minority colleges and universities, as well as women’s colleges included in the bill should greatly help improve diversity in these important financial institutions,” Thomas added.

Achieving better diversity in the federal government, especially those at the higher levels of the career scales, has been a number one priority of FEW. “While this will certainly help diversity in these targeted agencies, we still have work to do especially in our efforts to reinvigorate the Federal Women’s Program (FWP) in every federal agency,” warned FEW’s Special Assistant to the President for FWP Debra Hobbs. More information on these initiatives can be found at http://few.org/few_fwp.asp.

FEW is a private, non-profit organization founded in 1968 after Executive Order 11375 was issued that added sex discrimination to the list of prohibited discrimination in the federal government. FEW has grown into a proactive organization serving more than one million federally employed women – both in the military and civilian workforce. For more information on FEW, visit www.few.org.