Excluding education, women make up nearly half of the roughly 9 million workers in state and local government -- but they remain underrepresented in management and leadership roles. In general, the higher you look on a government's organizational chart, the more likely a position is to be filled by a man.
Not so in Phoenix.
In that city, nearly half of the 36 department heads and other executive positions are held by women, a share that far exceeds the national average. Women head notoriously male-dominated agencies like transportation, water infrastructure and even public safety. In fact, the city of 1.5 million is the largest municipality in the country to have both a female police and fire chief. Women also lead the city's homeland security and emergency management departments, as well as the prosecutor's office.
Want to grow your economy? Close the gender gap.
That’s the advice from a new report that says states and cities could add up to $4.3 trillion to their annual economic output simply by focusing on policies that create a more equitable environment for women in the workforce.
The report, produced by the think tank McKinsey Global Institute, looked at levels of gender equality in measurable areas like political representation; workforce participation and leadership; educational attainment and teenage pregnancy rates. Overall, researchers found high gender inequality in many states and in some of the top 50 largest metropolitan areas.
"The real opportunity here is for a state to say, 'How could we do better? What are the levers that we can pull to get motivated and begin to address this?'" said Vivian Riefberg, one of the report's authors.