Minority and Gender Differences in Officer Career Progression

This report documents research on the career progression of the dif-ferentminority and gender groups in the officer corps. The research,which was conducted in 1994-1996, contributed to a Department ofDefense (DoD) study of equal opportunity in the officer pipeline.Therefore, the officer management policies and procedures de-scribedin this report are the ones that were in place at the time theresearch was conducted. Since that time, numerous changes havebeen made; important changes are described in the footnotes to thereport.The DoD report, titled Career Progression of Minority and WomenOfficers, was released by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defensefor Personnel and Readiness in August 1999. The DoD study was re-questedby Secretary William Perry in a 1994 memorandum and car-riedout by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personneland Readiness. The Joint Service Equal Opportunity Task Force andthe Defense Equal Opportunity Council have continued to addressthe issues raised in the DoD report and this RAND report.The RAND project was sponsored by the Assistant Secretary ofDefense for Force Management Policy and conducted in the Forcesand Resources Policy Center of the National Defense ResearchInstitute (NDRI), a federally funded research and development cen-tersponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the JointStaff, the unified commands, and the defense agencies. [Rand]