Addressing ‘This Woeful Imbalance’: Efforts to Improve Women's Representation at CIA, 1947–2014

Abstract

From the wartime Office of Strategic Services to the contemporary Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), women have played a key role in US national intelligence. Yet, aside from episodic attention to the especially colorful lives of individual spies or analysts, few resources have been available to assess the broader status and service of these women. On 30 October 2013, the Central Intelligence Agency released the document collection From Typist to Trailblazer: The Evolving View of Women in the CIA's Workforce, a set of declassified files related to women's employment at the agency. This essay places these documents – which include personnel files, interagency memoranda, and internal CIA surveys and studies – into their broader institutional and social contexts, arguing that, despite the slow pace of change, CIA has made significant progress in addressing sex discrimination within its ranks.