The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Women scarce in Secret Service
Scandal highlights shortage, may threaten efforts to close gap.
WASHINGTON — Secret Service agents are often portrayed in popular culture as disciplined, unflappable, loyal — and male. A spiraling prostitution scandal that has highlighted the dearth of women in the agency that protects the president and dignitaries has many wondering: Would more females in the ranks prevent future dishonor?
Only about a 10th of field agents and uniformed officers are women, a shortage some attribute to travel demands that can be especially taxing on women balancing families and careers. A scandal that risks portraying the agency as unfriendly to women, however, could set back efforts to close the gender gap.
“I can’t help but think that there would be some progress if there was more diversity and if there were more women that were there,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “When you have a diversity of people there, it brings more account- ability.”
Women make up about 25 percent of the agency’s workforce, but only about 11 percent of agents and uniformed officers, said spokesman Ed Donovan. That’s significantly lower than the 19 percent of female special agents in the FBI.
The agency has aggressively recruited women, targeting female-oriented career fairs and sending brochures to colleges.
“We all recognize that we want to get more women into the Secret Service,” Donovan said.
But that wasn’t easy even before the a Secret Service officer and a prostitute publicly argued over payment in a hotel hallway April 12 in Colombia. A dozen Secret Service employees and a dozen military personnel have been implicated. Although Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said it appeared to be isolated, the agency has since confirmed it’s investigating if employees hired prostitutes and strippers ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to El Salvador last year.
Paige Pinson, 45, spent 15 years with the agency, and her father, W. Ralph Basham, is a former director. She said it wasn’t the culture that encouraged her to forego her agent’s position. After all, male agents were loyal to each other and fiercely protective of her. She’d drink alongside them at bars and laughed at the “groupies” who fawned over their status. It was, instead, the birth of her first child that inspired her to seek a less travel-intensive analyst’s position. She left the agency in 2009.
“You do miss birthdays, you do miss Christmas, and you miss piano recitals,” Pinson said, “and maybe women are just more sensitive to that than men can be.”
The agency enjoys vaunted prestige in American popular culture, but the rigors of a protective detail — jetting off at a moment’s notice to protect a dignitary, being on-call around the clock — isn’t for everyone. It’s the type of full-bore commitment that distinguishes the Secret Service from other law enforcement agencies.
“I know they work hard and long hours too, but at the end of the day, they go home at night,” said Barbara Riggs, who spent 31 years with the agency, serving on presidential protective details for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — ascending to the role of a supervisor — before retiring as deputy director in 2006. “You can’t say the same for being a Secret Ser- vice agent.”
And even before the current scandal there were incidents that suggested the Secret Service was less than welcoming to women. Emails filed as part of a race discrimination lawsuit show workers sharing racially and sexually inappropriate jokes. An alcohol-soaked bar brawl involving off-duty agents in 2002 involved allegations that an agent had bitten off part of a man’s ear — though no charges were brought and a jury sided with the agent in a civil trial. A 2002 U.S. News & World Report contained allegations of heavy drinking, pornography viewing at work and security lapses.
In the latest debacle, the Secret Service has forced eight employees from their jobs and is seeking to revoke the security clearance of another employee, which would effectively force him to resign. Three others have been cleared of serious wrongdoing. How much it sets back efforts to recruit women may depend on the pervasiveness of inappropriate behavior, said Donna Milgram, executive director of the National Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science.
“It’s a way of operating,” she said, “that I think most of us would consider a way that was left behind 30 years ago.”