LEWIS, Gregory B

Race, sex, and performance ratings in the federal service - malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers, nov./dec.1997

Has affirmative action promoted women and minorities to levels where they perform less well than their white male counterparts? Do women and minorities have perform better to acheive the same pay? Can racial and sexual differences in performance ratings whther legitimate or discriminatory, help explain why white men continue to earn more than other apparently comparable employees? Using a 1 percent sample of federal personal records for the 1990s, I examined racial and sexual differences in performance rating among employees in similar positions and among comparably educated and experienced employees. Women, especially white women, typically received higher rating than white men at the same grades in the same agencies. Minorities, however, had somewhat worse chances than monninorities of receiving "outstanding" ratings and were more likely to recetive merely "fully successful" ratings.