OIG report on Hussein’s era DOJ & FBI Gender Discrimination & Harrassmnet
https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2018/e1803.pdf
>We also identified one negative perception about differing treatment that staff members across agencies, position types, and genders held, which is that personal relationships, or “who you know,” at an agency had a greater impact on a staff member’s career than merit. According to our interviewees and focus group participants, this often took the form of a component-level “good ol’ boys club” (the club), which they believed had a major influence on organizational decisions.
We found that these perceptions of differing treatment based on gender or personal relationships negatively influenced staff’s perception of gender equity and equity overall at their agencies or offices. We believe that these perceptions can result in negative consequences to the components and their employees in several ways. First, the perception that personnel decisions are driven more by “who you know” than by merit could negatively affect staff members’ trust and belief about equity in their agency and possibly discourage qualified employees from applying for promotions or from taking part in career enhancing activities that could benefit the agency as well as the employee. To the extent that negative perceptions were held by women more than men, this can also impede components’ efforts to increase the representation of women at all levels.