Military Equal Opportunity

Pentagon policy holds that discrimination based on race, national origin, gender, or other factors is counter-productive to combat readiness and mission accomplishment and contrary to good order and discipline. GAO reviewed Military Equal Opportunity Assessments prepared by the military services and examined active-duty personnel data to determine whether racial or gender disparities existed in selection rates. GAO examined accessions, assignments considered career enhancing, and promotions for fiscal years 1989 through 1993. In measuring promotion rates among women, American Indians, Asians, blacks, and Hispanics compared with those for whites, GAO found that blacks in the military were statistically less likely than whites to be promoted. In contrast, women had a greater-than-expected likelihood of promotion.

GAO found that: (1) MEOA do not consistently identify and assess the significance of possible racial and gender disparities within the services; (2) MEOA categories are reported differently by each service, since the services are not required to report data on low rank promotions and voluntary separations; (3) the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Equal Opportunity (DASD EO) has not analyzed the services' MEOA or Department of Defense (DOD) summaries for fiscal year 1993; (4) there are significant statistical disparities in the number of minorities considered for accessioning, career enhancement, and promotion; and (5) some of these disparities can be attributed to job-related and societal factors.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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