Affirmative action is one of the federal government's major tools to overcome job discrimination. Its purpose is to ensure equal employment opportunity in state and local governments, in federal agencies and in private firms holding or seeking federal contracts of $10,000 or more.' Thus far, there has been no data-based determination of whether federal affirmative action oversight has a divergent impact on public and non-public organizations. This study begins to explore this question. It examines the respective effects of Maritime Administration and Civil Service Commission compliance on female/male employment patterns in private and Naval blue-collar shipyard jobs between 1972 and 1977. In 1972 Maritime started to require private shipyard affirmative action plans to include goals for women. Until that time, oversight concentrated on improving job opportunities for black males.2 In 1973 Civil Service regulations authorized federal agencies to include goals and timetables for women as well as minorities.3 In October, 1978 the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) removed affirmative action monitoring from the 16 agencies responsible for this task and began to oversee the private sector directly.4 In January, 1979 affirmative action supervision of federal agencies was transferred from the Civil Service Commission to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).5 The intent of these shifts is to improve affirmative action oversight. Although Maritime and Civil Service no longer oversee affirmative action programs, this study draws attention to factors that are likely to enhance and/or hinder the success of OFCCP and EEOC compliance activities. Existing data-based research assessing the impact of affirmative action compliance concentrates on changes in employment and/or wage patterns for minorities and women in either private businesses, the federal government, or state and local governments. Some investigations of the private sector employ cross-sectional analysis to compare firms holding government contracts, which are therefore subject to affirmative action