Parity in the City of Sacramento: An Effort Spearheaded by Councilwoman Angelique Ashby

By Julia Burrows, Director – Governing Institute

The movement to increase women holding local government executive positions must include and be amplified by elected officials. As we know, appointments to the highest level are made by Councils and County Boards and establishing a culture of greater equity, inclusion, and empowerment is most successful when formalized by those in elected and executive positions.

Councilwoman Angelique Ashby of Sacramento led the charge in her city to not just raise awareness but take action researching and presenting the “Gender Parity: in the City of Sacramento: A Report Card.” Her report, prepared to expand a request by the City Council on diversity within the ranks of city employees, was presented to the full Council on September 6, 2016 with over 30 women managers and staff present. Councilwoman Ashby highlighted the difference between diversity and gender parity. True gender parity would be 50% of the city workforce being female to reflect Sacramento’s population. Diversity should be among the entire spectrum of employees, male or female. The report was originally scheduled to include a study of diversity among city employees. She expanded the study to look at diversity, salary, and ethnicity and highlight the action needed to intentionally hire, train and promote more women.

Councilwoman Ashby is the only woman of nine Councilmembers in the city of 500,000 residents. The City Manager, City Attorney, and Assistant City Managers are all men. “So of the power structure,” she says, “less than 10% is female.” This has impacts in a number of ways in the decision making processes for the city with a majority of Council committees without a woman including the current City Manager search committee.

Findings within the work, conducted by her office with a full-time summer intern, include:

• Of Sacramento’s total workforce, 64% are Male (3233) and 36% are Female (1832)
• City of Sacramento management employees are nearly evenly split with 52% male (317) and 48% female (287)
• Disparities when looking at a cross section of salaries exist: women make up approximately 55% of the ($0-30k) income bracket, but just 25% of the highest income ($180k+) bracket.

Final action of the Council in response to the Report Card included:

• Women’s Leadership Group. Formalizing a Women’s Leadership Group with funding for regular events including workshops, a speaker series focused on women and gender issues, executive leadership training, professional and organizational development and networking/mentoring opportunities.
• Office of Organizational Development. Reinstituting the OOD focused on promoting professional development opportunities, including the City Management Institute, and other leadership development institutes. The OOD will focus on succession planning, building leaders, and developing managers from within the ranks of city government.
• Diversity and Equity Manager. Any specialized position focusing on the diversity of city staff must include a gender component. The Diversity Manager recommended by city staff should instead be the “Diversity and Equity Manager.” The scope of the position originally proposed in response to the call for more diversity was expanded at Councilmember Ashby’s request to be broadened to include Equity in the title and purpose.

The September 6, 2016 Council presentation can be by clicking on this link. Councilwoman Ashby noted that for her this is about the empowerment of women as a Councilmember and as a mom of three including a three-year old daughter. She is fighting to change the dynamic for the next generation to make it better and more equitable ten and fifteen years down the line. She’ll be tracking the progress in Sacramento and through her inspiration, will have an impact for many current and future women employees and many other agencies who will follow her lead in the future.

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Julia Burrows is the Director of the Governing Institute. The Governing Institute is a three-year-old initiative of Governing and e.Republic focused on improving state and local government performance and strengthening public-sector innovation, leadership and citizen engagement.

Julia is the former president and executive director of Greenwise Joint Venture, a nonprofit focused on making the Sacramento region a hub for clean technology. In this role, she also served as senior adviser to Mayor Johnson on sustainability, climate and resiliency initiatives. Earlier in her career, Burrows was deputy city manager and economic development director for the Northern California city of Roseville.