Matt Escobedo, County Equal Employment Opportunity Plan (EEOP) officer, updated the Board of Supervisors at their Feb. 27 meeting on the current status of racial diversity in the County workforce as compared to the County’s demographics. The chart below shows all County employees in the “County of Ventura Workforce,” including those in the Health Care Agency and Sheriff’s Office. The community statistics were derived from 2020 Census data.
According to the data, Hispanics and whites have nearly equal percentages of residents in the County; however, according to Escobedo, Hispanic employees are over-represented in the County workforce by about 4.58 percent, while white employees are under-represented by 5.24 percent.
The term Escobedo used for any group under-represented was “underutilized.” The federal government requires the County to craft a plan to address the underutilization. Escobedo assured the Board that those requirements in no way compromised merit-based recruitment.
Escobedo noted “significant underutilization of Hispanic females in the fire department” and shared recruitment strategies the County is using to attract females. The Sheriff’s office similarly made a commitment to hire and retain more female officers and “people of color.” Over the last five years, 35 percent of officer hires have been females. Escobedo credits previous underutilization reports with the Sheriff focusing on those hiring goals.
Tim McCarthy of Move the Needle, a civic engagement organization, was the only person to make a public comment on this item at the Board meeting. He asked the County why it was continuing with racial policies even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2023 that race as a basis for college admissions was unconstitutional. He urged the supervisors to reject the EEOP report, freeze hiring (except for the Sheriff’s office) and hire an independent auditor to investigate what he’s been told by several former employees is a toxic work environment.
Unmoved, the Board approved the EEOP report and policy statement 5-0 without change.
Maybe females need more encouragement to go into this male dominated field. I remember in the 70’s when government workers from employment agencies or even in high school when a teacher would try to encourage women to go into male dominated fields like construction by just saying there’s a lot more pay in the fields that mostly men work in. But it seemed like most men in those fields could be very hostile to women trying to “break into” those fields. I even remember reading where the workers set it up so a pipe just missed hitting a woman who just started working there or it did hit her and almost killed her… something scary like that. Who wants to work in a field where your co-workers hate you? I think today more men are open minded, but it wasn’t that way back then. Men can be intimidating. It’s just easier sometimes to stick to a field where you know you’ll be welcomed even if you do make less money.. it depends on your personality and motivation too. If you are determined to make that money come hell or high water you’ll put a lot of effort in and probably succeed. But if you are shy, insecure, self-conscious, you probably won’t even try or won’t last long. I’ve noticed men with those issues (shy, panicky, anxiety, insecure) sometimes end up in so-called “women’s fields” because typically women are welcoming to have men working with them, such as in health field, or in teaching field, or with the elderly. Of course, men have issues too, like in nursing, in the 80’s, they advised any male students not to be alone with female patients as the female could accuse them of something sexual happening, same with children. I think it’s been standard procedure now for male employees in those fields not to be alone with the client but recently the procedure is exactly the same for male or female employees at least with children it is.