Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

One of the key challenges for human resource management in the public sector is understanding the roots of gender differences in employee turnover. Some empirical research on turnover motivation has found that, after controlling for workforce representation, pay discrepancies, and managerial congruence, gender differences disappear. Other work continues to identify challenges that affect women’s careers in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). This study uses personnel data describing the civilian segment of the Department of Defense (DoD) workforce to perform a quantitative analysis of factors associated with turnover. We focus our analysis on interactions between retirement eligibility, gender, and participation in STEM fields. Our preliminary results indicate that, while gender differences in the likelihood of employee separation persist within the DoD, for STEM job categories the gender differential largely disappears. This finding suggests that the public sector may offer an environment that is more hospitable to women in STEM fields than the private sector. Additionally, these empirical findings that quantify differences in turnover rates may help guide public workforce administration as an increasing segment of the workforce becomes eligible for retirement.