Prompted by several class actions, among other factors, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a report Monday on recruitment and hiring gender disparities in public safety occupations that recommends targeting women at the college level.

The EEOC said in its report “Recruitment & Hiring Gendered Disparities in Public Safety Occupations” that also prompting the report were Congressional hearings on the participation of women in the federal government and the surge of hiring for federal law enforcement positions planned and now taking place.

The survey was based on research and on EEOC staff-hosted focus groups with employees of 14 different agencies, according to the report.

The report said the percentage of females holding various federal occupations ranges from 0% as “customers and border protection interdiction” to 2% in fire protection and prevention to 33% of the workforce as park rangers.

The study said barriers to female’s recruitment and hiring are lack of work-life balance for women in public safety positions, misperceptions that women are uncomfortable with carrying firearms and with physically strenuous job functions, hiring officers’ concerns that women cannot meet rigorous fitness exam requirements and too few initiatives that are aimed at women’s recruitment.

In addition to more college recruitment, to increase recruitment and hiring the report recommends: coordinating a government-wide cadet program; targeting outreach as early as the grade school level; increasing women recruiters’ visibility; setting diversity strategy goals tied to recruitment and hiring; making an administration-wide push, using one-stop, one-day hiring processes, and using social media.

The EEOC said in the report that it plans to issue a second report evaluating promotion and retention rates of women within public safety occupations in fiscal year 2019.

Last week, the EEOC filed seven lawsuits charging firms across the country with sexual harassment, which it said should reinforce to employers that harassment violates federal law.