A new report warns that federal rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies introduced earlier this year have sparked deep anxiety amongst women and minority civil servants.
The report, Changes in Federal Workforce Policy and Their Implications for Women and Minority Employees, provides a stark assessment of how the federal workforce may change following the January 2025 Executive Order 14173, which dismantled long-standing DEI initiatives.
According to the findings, the rollback – combined with proposed workforce reductions – risks further disadvantaging groups who, despite decades of policy protections, remain disproportionately exposed to discrimination and limited career progression.
RISING DISCRIMINATION CONCERNS
Federal employee engagement had been improving through mid-2024, but advocates say those gains are now in jeopardy. Experts point to growing evidence that removing DEI infrastructure can accelerate turnover, particularly among minority staff who often shoulder additional workplace pressures.
Recent federal surveys show rising concerns about discrimination, reflecting wider national trends. In 2024, EEOC discrimination charges rose by more than 9%. At the same time, a majority of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults oppose federal agency cuts and the dismantling of DEI programmes, recognising that minority communities rely heavily on public institutions for legal protections and essential services.
The report situates the 2025 directive within the broader history of US diversity policy – from President Kennedy’s 1961 Affirmative Action order to the Biden administration’s DEIA framework – concluding that it marks one of the most significant reversals in federal practice.
STARK INEQUALITIES PERSIST
Despite long-term gains in representation, stark inequalities persist. By 2024, people of colour made up roughly 41% of the federal workforce and women around 46%. Yet senior leadership remains disproportionately white and male. In fact, nearly half of senior executive service positions are held by white men, while women occupy only about one third.
Pay gaps reinforce these disparities. Among older federal employees, age-related differences alone can widen gender pay gaps by more than $10,000 annually. Women typically face the largest penalties, even when qualifications match those of their male peers.
For women of colour, the disparities are even more pronounced. Black and Hispanic women consistently encounter the steepest barriers to promotion and some of the lowest pay levels, despite comparable credentials. Hispanic women, in particular, see their representation drop sharply at higher grade levels.
CONSTANT CHURN
Beyond pay and promotion, the report identifies another major driver of inequality: the constant churn caused by shifting administrations. Frequent reclassifications, reorganisation efforts and abrupt policy changes erode trust – particularly amongst minority employees, who already face systemic disadvantages.
Research shows that when workplaces feel unstable, staff perceive fewer opportunities and are significantly more likely to leave public service. The increasing politicisation of the civil service has intensified these cycles, making career pathways more fragile and heavily dependent on political shifts.
PERSISTANT INSTABILITY
The anxiety is not limited to federal workers. Drawing on MissionSquare Research Institute findings, the report notes that more than half of state and local government employees have considered leaving their jobs. Younger workers and Black employees appear especially likely to look elsewhere.
In workplaces where staff do not feel supported or included, women and minority employees consistently report lower trust and stronger intentions to leave. One survey of prospective state employees captured the sentiment clearly: lengthy hiring processes, funding uncertainty and persistent instability make public-sector careers increasingly hard to navigate.
GROWING UNCERTAINTY FOR MINORITY EMPLOYEES
Together, these findings point to a pivotal moment. As the federal government pulls back from decades of DEI commitments, women and minority employees face growing uncertainty, alongside renewed fears that long-standing inequities could deepen.
The central question, the report suggests, is whether the nation’s largest employer can continue to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the country, or whether recent policy reversals will widen inequality at exactly the moment when many communities rely most on federal services and protections.
UPHOLDING CONCLUSION MATTERS
With federal DEI protections being scaled back, the report emphasises the importance of maintaining workforces that genuinely reflect the country’s diversity. Diverse teams produce better decisions, foster public trust and provide fairer, more responsive services. But the strategies for doing so now vary significantly between federal agencies and private employers.
Tailored advice for federal agencies: Navigating policy reversals while maintaining fairness
Even with DEI programmes curtailed, federal agencies remain bound by longstanding civil rights laws, including Title VII and anti-discrimination requirements governing hiring, pay and promotion. The report identifies several legally solid steps agencies can still take:
- Apply job-related hiring and promotion criteria consistently, using structured interviews and documented scoring.
- Broaden lawful outreach through partnerships with veterans’ groups, HBCUs, tribal colleges, disability organisations and community institutions, without using demographic quotas.
- Strengthen mentorship and skills-based development programmes to ensure clear, transparent advancement pathways.
- Use standardised performance evaluations with multiple reviewers to reduce bias.
- Maintain robust anti-discrimination reporting channels, which remain a legal requirement.
- Provide behaviour-focused training on respectful conduct, anti-harassment standards and conflict resolution, avoiding ideological framing while reinforcing expectations.
These systems-focused measures help preserve fairness and representation without crossing newer legal boundaries.
Tailored advice for private employers: Preserving inclusive culture without legal risk
Private-sector employers face a shifting legal landscape as some states impose restrictions on DEI efforts, but many effective inclusion practices remain fully lawful when grounded in fairness and business necessity. Recommended steps include:
- Adopting skills-based hiring to broaden talent pools and reduce reliance on exclusionary networks.
- Building diverse recruitment pipelines – through community colleges, professional associations, disability networks and returnship programmes – without setting demographic targets.
- Using structured interviews and evaluation rubrics to limit subjectivity in hiring and promotions.
- Investing in mentorship, sponsorship and transparent promotion frameworks to strengthen retention.
- Offering behaviour-based training, such as anti-harassment, inclusive leadership and communications training, while avoiding politically charged content.
- Monitoring pay equity and promotion trends with anonymised data to identify disparities, without making employment decisions based on protected traits.
- Documenting employment decisions thoroughly to ensure consistency, job-related justification and legal defensibility.
These practices help organisations maintain trust, strengthen workplace culture and reduce turnover, particularly among women, Black, Hispanic, Asian American, disabled, LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented workers.
MAINTAINING TRUST & FAIRNESS AT WORK
Although federal agencies and private employers now operate under increasingly different constraints, the report concludes that both share a core responsibility to build workplaces where opportunities are transparent, standards are fair, and every employee – regardless of background – has a genuine chance to progress.
In a period marked by political upheaval and the unwinding of long-standing diversity protections, these practical and legally sound approaches remain among the few steady routes to maintaining trust and fairness at work.
Read the full report here.
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