DeLysa Burnier
Several years ago, my colleague, Joy Huntley, made an intriguing presentation to the faculty on her experience integrating gender issues and scholarship into ancient and medieval political thought. For some reason I had been locked into thinking that o nly courses with the word "women" or "feminist" in their titles could deal with the subject of gender. Dr. Huntley's presentation made it clear that such an assumption was false. I resolved then that the next time the Women's Studies Program offered the s eminar, "Integrating Gender Scholarship: Toward an Inclusive Curriculum," I would apply to participate.
The next time was summer 1990, and with the help of seminar leaders and participants, I successfully integrated gender into the introductory public administration course, "Principles of Public Administration." Thereafter, I wrote an article, published in the fall 1993 issue of Feminist Teacher, that described the content changes I made, as well as my experiences teaching public administration from a gender-integrated perspective. The research I did to prepare this course convinced me that a feminist pe rspective was largely missing from the discipline of public administration, and that connection, in turn, led me to write a paper arguing for the development of just such a perspective. As the following essay makes clear, a feminist perspective can be app lied fruitfully not only to the discipline of public administration but also to the project of reinventing government.
Recently, the idea that government can be reinvented at all levels has come to grip the imagination of administrators, elected officials, citizens, and scholars alike as frustrations have mounted over the way government delivers services, makes decisio ns, and treats its employees and clients. The reinvention project is multifaceted and open-ended, but it takes the market as its ideal with bureaucratic government gradually giving way to entrepreneurial government. Entrepreneurial government is competitive, decentralized, streamlined, and performance driven, rather than regulation bound and rule driven. The administrator is given more authority and the flexibility to be innovative and responsive, while the bureaucra tic client becomes a customer with choices among quality services.
So powerful is this image of government that David Osborne and Ted Gaebler's Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector became a national best-seller in 1992. The reinvention message was carried directly by Osborne to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, where he was an insider and thereafter a transition adviser. Shortly after his inauguration, Clinton appointed Vice-President Al Gore to head up the National Performance Review (NPR) with Osborne as an adv iser. In 1993 Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less: The Report of the National Performance Review was published, and, like Reinventing Government, it urged federal bureaucracies to reinvent themselves through entrepreneurial principles a nd practices.1
Although it is too early to determine whether the NPR's recommendations will be implemented effectively across government, the concept of reinvention is significant for two reasons. First, it challenges the bureaucratic method of organization as the ta ken-for-granted reality of administrative life, and, second, it suggests that administrative structures, practices, principles, and values are neither permanent nor unalterable. Indeed, the reinvention debate reveals what too often lies concealed in publi c administration thinking—namely, that "[human]-made and [human]-serving contexts remain open to redefinition and reconstruction, and most important, have no meaning independent of the individuals and communities whose actions define them."2 In other word s, the bureaucratic method of organization should not be viewed as the fixed (if flawed) reality of administrative life. The reinventing government debate proves that for many citizens and officials entrepreneurial government is a compelling alternative t o traditional bureaucracy.
Feminist scholars3 long have imagined alternatives to traditional bureaucratic government consonant with the insights gleaned from feminist research and women's organizational experiences. Unfortunately, reinventing government from a feminist perspecti ve has not captured either policymakers or citizens' attention. Lacking the cultural and political appeal of the entrepreneurial perspective, the feminist alternative to bureaucracy has produced no best-selling books, campaign mandates, or federal commiss ions urging its adoption as a model of government.
Even within the discipline of public administration, women's scholarship and experiences have remained largely on the periphery, with discussion limited to a narrow range of topics such as equal opportunity, affirmative action, comparable worth, and nu merical representation in public bureaucracies. These are important topics, especially because women are underrepresented in executive roles at all levels of government, receive lower pay, and experience shorter "career ladders." Nonetheless, other issues merit attention as well. As Camilla Stivers notes, "feminist theory offer(s) new theories of power, virtue, of the nature of organization, and of leadership and professionalism. . . . Yet few if any of these ideas have made their way into conversations i n public administration."4
Given today's interest in reinvention it is especially important that this conversation begin so that feminist knowledge and women's experiences can be incorporated in any project to reinvent government. Thus far, the gender dimensions of administrativ e life have been all but ignored by the Gore Commission. In fact, the commission's report is written as though women and men experience public organizations similarly whether they are managers or clients. In this essay I will argue for a gender-inclusive reinvention project that would retrieve women from the margins by challenging the longstanding practice of constructing administrative reality in gender-neutral terms. As it stands, feminist insights and women's experiences are no more a part of the "new governance" (entrepreneurial government) than they were a part of the old (bureaucratic government).5
In order to make the case for a gender-inclusive government reinvention project, this essay first defines feminist theory and clarifies the various approaches found therein. Second, it argues for the development of a feminist public administration pers pective that is interpretive-critical. Third, it examines several public administration issue areas (e.g., leadership and organization theory) where taking a feminist perspective might prove fruitful for the reinvention project. I will conclude by arguing that if reinvention is to be truly transforming, then public administration's traditional account of administrative reality as gender neutral must be replaced with one that reflects the knowledge and experiences of both women and men.
Feminism refers to the political movement based on the belief in equality of women and men that takes as its signal commitment the elimination of "gender-based injustice." This movement is assumed to encompass many different and even contradictory poli tical viewpoints and interpretations of feminism, all of which nevertheless defend the above belief and commitment. Feminist theory is devoted to the description and explanation of gender inequality in society, as well as to prescriptions for its removal. Specifically, it examines the concepts central to the social construction of femininity and masculinity, as well as how these constructions "circumscribe an individual's life prospects in determinate social formations." Feminist theory also analyzes the dimensions of inequality that have shaped women historically and in diverse societies. Further, it probes the causes of women's subordination and the factors that contribute to its perpetuation. Finally, feminist theory "envisions a sexually egalitarian p olity and offers prescriptions for social transformation."6
Although feminist theorists share the above concerns, they do not necessarily share a common theoretical framework or epistemology. Feminist theory can be informed by liberal, psychoanalytic, socialist, or postmodern ideas, to name only a few sources. Indeed, many scholars endorse plural theories and plural views with the argument that if the range and diversity of women's experiences are to be understood, then multiple views are necessary.7 These scholars are critical of previous attempts to develop u niversal feminist theories, because such theories assume a common gender experience that is questionable when factors such as race, class, age, and sexual orientation are considered. Grand or universal theory, according to these scholars, should be eschew ed in favor of "contextual, situated analysis" that is anti-essentialist and anti-foundational.8
Feminist theorists generally have used three approaches to address the problem of gender difference and inequality.9 The first approach, often associated with liberal feminists, denies or dismisses the importance of sex-based differences. Perceived sex differences, whether biological or social in origin, provide no valid ground for denying women the rights and privileges accorded to men. In making its case for gender equality, this approach relies on the liberal concepts of procedural justice, rights, and equality. It seeks to expose gender biases, challenge traditional sex roles, and implement institutional and legal reforms until women become fully equal to men. This approach is represented in public administration through discussions of affirmative action, comparable worth, women's representation in the bureaucracy, and barriers to promotion. It also is represented in the Gore Commission Report's brief discussion of developing a family-friendly workplace and a diverse but equal work force.
The second approach recognizes the importance of equality while embracing the differences that exist between women and men. The problem, according to this approach, is not that gender differences exist but that those qualities and experiences typically associated with women have been devalued by society. Because of their experiences as childbearers, mothers, caregivers, and their knowledge of what it means to be powerless, women have developed important capacities to connect, nurture, and empathize wit h others. Moreover, they have developed alternative "ways of knowing" based on emotion and intuition, which are as important as objectivity and reason. This strategy has been criticized for its tendency to assume an "essential" female experience based on biological or socialization processes. Also, its assertion of a "female voice" and "female ways of knowing" neither describes all women nor excludes all men. With few exceptions, little of this approach has found its way into mainstream thought about publ ic administration thinking. It is absent altogether from the Gore Commission Report.10
The third strategy, drawing on postmodern propositions, attempts, according to Deborah Rhode, "less to deny or embrace difference than to alter the terms on which it traditionally has been conceptualized." Dualistic thinking and analytic constructions (e.g., male/female or masculine/feminine) should be challenged by "dislodg[ing] difference as the exclusive focus of gender-related questions." The various dualisms central to the previous two approaches either overlook or downplay both the diversity of w omen's experiences and the fragmentation of their identities along the lines of age, race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. In other words, no single theory, framework, set of values, or public policy solution captures the diverse contexts in whi ch women live their multiple lives. Consequently, postmodern feminist scholars give preference to accounts that are partial, sensitive to context, analytically diverse, and comparative rather than universal in scope. Stivers's feminist perspective in admi nistration is consistent with this newer and burgeoning approach.11
This brief discussion makes clear the numerous ways in which scholars might address the problem of gender difference and inequality. Regardless of which perspective is adopted, all three recognize gender as an important analytic category with the poten tial for enhancing and transforming our understanding of social and political reality. It is this potential for enlarged understanding that makes the development of a feminist perspective in public administration worthwhile for the reinventing government project. Such a perspective offers a new vantage point from which to view taken-for-granted theories, issues, and concepts, as well as administrative reality itself. How such a feminist perspective in public administration might be developed is the questi on next considered.
Although there are many possible alternatives, an interpretive-critical framework represents the best guide for the development of feminist theory and research in public administration. This framework is not exclusively associated with feminist theory, as it may be found in many disciplines and is associated with many different intellectual positions. The general purpose of interpretive inquiry is to help researchers see events through the eyes of those who lived in and through them. It "attempts to ac count for an action by making sense of it in the same way" that participants made sense of it themselves.12
Underlying interpretive inquiry are several important assumptions. First, individuals are assumed to be "acting subjects rather than behaving objects—as persons in situations, as agents acting within a public world of understandable norms, conventions, and rules." Second, interpretive inquiry assumes the meaningfulness of human action and seeks to uncover the meanings involved individuals hold for actions, events, and situations. Third, interpretive inquiry assumes that explanations of meanings must be organized around the concepts of action, intention, and convention. Interpretive inquiry, according to Bruce Jennings, "aims to make sense of (elucidate or explicate) individual actions in terms of the agent's intentions in (or the reasons for) the actio n. And these intentions, in turn, are explicated in terms of the cultural context of conventions, rules, and norms in which they are formed."13
The interpretive turn is useful for public administration because it enables scholars to examine systematically the actions, meanings, symbols, and language used by administrators (female and male) in the construction of administrative and organization al realities. Furthermore, it enables scholars to analyze the concrete, situational, day-to-day experiences of the sexes in the public sector, without making either abstract, universal categories. Indeed, according to Stivers, if the gender dilemmas of pu blic administration are to be examined, then one must "take into account everyday life practices." Finally, the very range and nuance of the interpretive turn is what allows it to accommodate the diverse aims of feminist theory.14
For example, interpretive research might take the gender inequalities identified in the first feminist approach and ask how are they actually experienced by women in the public workplace? It might also seek answers to the questions of what kinds (if an y) discrimination have they faced and how have discriminatory barriers been dealt with? The second feminist approach suggests that women's values, ways of knowing, and experiences are different from those of men. Interpretive inquiry can be used to invest igate how such presumed values, ways of knowing, and experiences figure in administrative settings and actions, with the purpose of looking not only for differences between women and men but also at possible differences among women.
Similarly, interpretive inquiry is capable of generating the grounded, contextual, comparative knowledge of women called for in the third perspective. Interpretive research historically has eschewed global or totalizing generalizations in favor of the particular "thickly" described. By adopting an interpretive framework, then, scholars gain a better appreciation of the complexities and ambiguities that mark administrative life for all.
Because the interpretive turn is sometimes faulted for ignoring the institutional context and its collective meaning structures, the term "critical" is here added to this essay's framework. As Lisa Disch notes, a feminist critical theory of politics ha s only recently emerged, and it "shifts the study of gender from individual roles and identities to the study of the interplay between gender relations and the institutional contexts within which they take shape." Gender inequality, then, is not simply a role problem but something that is constituted and maintained within a "context of social practices that are structured and supported by collective institutions." A feminist perspective in public administration would be remiss, then, if it failed to exami ne critically the extent to which public organizations are "gendered hierarchies." The goal of such examination, it is hoped, is to lead to the eventual transformation (or reinvention) of these organizations.15
There is currently very little feminist critical scholarship in public administration. One exception is Suzanne Franzway, Dianne Court, and R.W. Connell's 1989 study of feminism, bureaucracy, and the Australian state. The question they explore is how s tate institutions maintain and support gender inequalities by denying women access to institutional power and equal representation within state structures. When women are placed into positions of power they tend to be peripheral units (e.g., Department of Labor) that lack influence and are controversial within the state. They further argue that state structures simultaneously "reflect and perpetuate the social and cultural understandings of male and female." Another exception is Nancy Fraser, who also tak es a feminist critical approach in her analysis of the American welfare system. The welfare system, she contends, is not only profoundly gender biased, but it also operates as a "juridical-administrative-therapeutic state apparatus" that depersonalizes, d epoliticizes and disempowers" both female and male clients.16
In sum, both the critical and the interpretive turns are important if a feminist perspective in public administration is to be developed. The latter enables us to understand the extent to which gender figures in the everyday world of administrators, wh ile the former illuminates the extent to which gender is embedded in the very structures of public organizations. Together they help clarify the role gender plays in the construction of administrative reality. With our general framework in place, we will consider briefly several issue areas in public administration where taking a feminist perspective might prove fruitful. These include issue areas where gender research is already underway but has yet to be included in what counts as "textbook" knowledge.< P>
Recent research suggests that women have pioneered in the development of an alternative to the traditional command-and-control leadership style. Called interactive leadership, it draws on many of the qualities previously dismissed as "feminine" in the leadership literature. Elements of this alternative style are still emerging, but they include adopting a leadership style which encourages active participation, sharing power and information, enhancing other's self-worth, and creating genuine excitement about people's work in the organization. More specifically, the style is collaborative and consensual and involves actively working to makes one's interactions with subordinates positive for everyone involved. Rather than treating everyone the same, empha sis is placed on acknowledging and managing individuals' needs within the organization. Although such a leadership style has been associated with women, we are not arguing that all women are interactive leaders or that it excludes men. Simply, "feminine" leadership should be viewed as a "complement, not as a replacement," to traditional leadership forms.17
Evidence of different leadership styles between women and men have been found in the public sector. Recently, Rita Mae Kelly, Mary Hale, and Jayne Burgess compared high-level state administrators in Arizona and found "notable differences in female and male [managerial/leadership] styles." A similar study of high-level administrators in Wisconsin also found different leadership/management styles. Women, like men, wanted to be effective in their jobs but were less likely to "compete and control" in doing so. Carol Edlund found through surveys/interviews with mid- and upper-level management women in local, county, and school governments "a distinct style of management" that is "unique, practical, and descriptive" and "shares the characteristics of service , nurturance, balance, and empowerment."18
Still another study confirmed different implementation styles among women in private and public universities. The women in this study adopted interactive and indirect leadership styles, rather than the command-and-control style. Finally, a study of twe nty public service employees who have or presently work for women found different managing styles between the sexes. The majority of the respondents "described female supervisors as differing from men in a positive way," and they reported that women took a more active interest in them as people, were better able to communicate, and created more open work settings.19
The success women have had with interactive leadership does not mean they have become fully accepted as administrative leaders in all settings. Because so few women actually make it into the senior ranks of government, the few who do often feel like to kens and consequently find themselves struggling to fit in. Jeane Kirkpatrick, for example, was never accepted by her male colleagues in the foreign policy bureaucracy in part because she was a woman. Throughout her tenure in the Reagan administration she remained on the outside of decision and policy-making circles even as the public perceived her to be a forceful policy actor.20
These recent studies, then, underscore the importance of gender as an analytic category in leadership studies, as well as the need for further research. Future research, however, should avoid turning possible differences between the sexes into reified categories of leadership. Second, research should pay attention to the structural limitations and opportunities presented to women in organizations which may account for perceived leadership differences. Third, more research is needed into the actual expe riences of women in the senior ranks of government. All too often it is the male administrator's story that is told through interviews, anecdotes, and formal study. Fourth, women's experiences as leaders may be more suited to certain kinds of organization s (i.e., decentralized, nontraditional, change oriented) over others. Interestingly, it is just this kind of organization that the Gore Commission recommends as a replacement for the centralized, tradition-bound bureaucracies of government.21
From the above research, it is clear that feminist research raises questions that bear directly on organization theory. First, the interactive (or female) style of leadership just discussed has resulted in some practical changes in organization structu re and approach. Among these changes produced are a flattening of hierarchy, decentralization, participatory decision-making structures, and the diffusion of authority throughout the organization. These changes have led to the development of a circular me thod of organization in contrast to the traditional pyramid. Moreover, in a circle organization weblike networks develop, rather than chains of command.22 Although the circle structure has proven effective in diverse organizations, it remains to be seen w hether it will work in public organizations. It is worth investigating, however, given the current dissatisfaction with government bureaucracies structured along the traditional line of command and control.
Besides suggesting concrete changes in organizations, feminist theory and values have been used as a means to critique public organizations and key concepts in public administration. Robert Denhardt and Jan Powell, for example, predicted the demise of "administrative man" and urged the adoption of an alternative model of organization based on the organizational values of the women's movement. They noted that until recently "contemporary theories of organization [were] largely theories about men in orga nizations, by men, and for men." Kathy Ferguson relied on a "feminist point of view" to mount an attack on the bureaucratic method of organization as a technique of pervasive social and political control. Ultimately, Ferguson envisions a nonbureaucratic c ollective life where bureaucratic discourse would be replaced with a feminist discourse centered on individual human development and community needs.23
Like Ferguson, J.J. Hendricks is critical of the rational-legal outlook that dominates organizations to the exclusion of all other values and concerns. Hendricks prefers to see a "women-centered" reality emerge in organizations that "empowers and affir ms diversity," values the "caring encounter," looks to context and not just principles to inform problem solutions, and nurtures the development of individuals, among other things.24
Joan Acker is highly critical of the gendered nature of organizations and their ability to dominate, control, and subordinate all people, especially women. Such widespread dissatisfaction with hierarchy and control has led some women's organizations to experiment with nonhierarchical forms of organizing. Recently, Kathleen Iannello studied three feminist organizations in a small New England city. In two of these organizations a modified consensus structure was developed, wherein critical decisions were made by the organization's membership as a whole while routine decisions were delegated horizontally to those with expertise or a particular interest in them. What this brief survey makes clear, then, is that feminist theory offers a vantage point from w hich to study contemporary organizational life and the possibilities for change.25
The 1980s was an especially troubling decade for government from an ethical standpoint. The Reagan administration was plagued by all manner of ethical lapses, some of which resulted in individual disgrace, while others resulted in large-scale scandals at the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Security Council, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Not surprisingly, ethics emerged as a significant research concern for public administration scholars.
Too often, however, discussion is confined to the history of ethics, the formation of professional ethics codes, and whether ethics can be taught. Although these topics are valuable, the discussion within public administration would be both broader and deeper if ethics from a feminist perspective were to be included. Feminist ethics centers on an ethic of care, with emphasis placed on such values as care, responsibility, concern, and connection with others.26 An ethic of care is associated with women b ecause of their historical experiences as primary childrearers and caregivers within the family and community and the social/psychological experience of childbearing and nurturing.
The discovery of an alternative moral orientation based on care originates in Carol Gilligan's pioneering work, In a Different Voice. In her research, Gilligan uncovered a moral orientation among women that centered on interdependence, connection, and relationships, along with a general concern that "no one be hurt." In contrast, men were more likely to rely on a moral orientation based on the abstract, impersonal principle of justice, or simply that everyone be treated equally. Gilligan does not argue for the superiority of an ethic of care over an ethic of justice. Rather, she argues that an ethic of care deserves to be recognized as a legitimate moral orientation among individuals and as a necessary supplement to the prevailing ethic of justice. In sum, justice and care form dual ethical contexts for individuals.27
The insights of Gilligan and other feminist ethicists are valuable for public administrators because many operate in this dual ethical context throughout their professional lives. As administrators they are expected to apply rules and deliver public go ods and services fairly and equally (ethic of justice), but as members of the "helping professions" or as "public servants" they are expected to help and care for the individual clients and communities they serve (ethic of care). The conflicts raised between these different ethical stances is great and often leads to the job burnout and conflict described by Michael Lipsky in Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in the Public Sector. The value conflicts between rul es and the personal treatment of individuals, and between professional ethics codes and personal discretion, are just two problem areas in public administration that would benefit from feminist ethics analysis. Furthermore, a key element of entrepreneuria l government is the view that clients should be treated like valued customers. Yet, as described in the Gore report, nowhere in the general discussion of quality and choice are care and concern examined as part of a customer orientation.
If decades can be defined by particular issues or value concerns, then the 1990s appears to be the decade where gender behavior in organizations finally received the attention it deserves. Widespread discussion of this subject was sparked initially by the controversial nature of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, but it has continued in the wake of events such as the Navy Tailhook scandal, the admitted misconduct of Senators Brock Adams and Bob Packwood, the debate over lesbians and gays servin g in the military, and the various allegations of sexual misconduct made against President Clinton. One affirmative outcome from these events is the increasing awareness that sexual harassment is an organizational problem that requires strong and effectiv e policy measures.28
Research on gender behavior in organizations, however, makes clear that overt forms of sexual harassment are just one aspect of a larger behavioral problem—namely, that women (and their bodies) continue to be a problematic, threatening organizational p resence to men, especially when they are equals or superiors. As Cynthia Cockburn illustrates in her study, women find themselves defined by men as the organizational "other." Rather than embrace the concept of equality, many men instead actively resist a nd subvert the organization's formal commitment to sexual equality in the workplace. Strategically, men have defined the situation for women in a way that asks them to be "just like a man" if they wish to have workplace equality, but if they claim to be " different from men" then they must reject equality claims altogether. Women experience this dilemma in myriad ways, including participating in conversations laced with innuendo and double entendres; tolerating sexual humor so as not to be labeled prudish; avoiding a "feminist" image at work; and looking the other way when male colleagues' rituals exclude them, such as fishing.29
Deborah Sheppard also explored the behavioral difficulties women managers face in public and private organizations. She noted that women were forced to negotiate what it meant to be a "female" and a "manager" on behavioral and language grounds determin ed by their male colleagues. Specifically, they found themselves struggling to appear neither "too feminine" or "not feminine enough" in order to please male coworkers. Overall, Sheppard noted "the ongoing strategizing by women to control others' percepti ons of them as sexual persons." Worse for women is that they are left to solve these problems personally when in fact they require organizational solutions.30
What this brief discussion highlights is the fact that women "experience a work reality that differs from men in many ways."31 These differing work realities need to be addressed, not ignored, if government reinvention is to succeed for both women and men administrators. Regardless of whether government is defined by bureaucracy or the market, women have a difficult time forging effective managerial identities because of organizationally maintained stereotypes about the "appropriate behavior" of women.
For example, a federal report on the "glass ceiling" noted that employees perceive a gendered organizational climate in some agencies that hinders their job performance and productivity.32 Yet, nowhere in the Gore report is this issue raised, because g ender is treated as nonproblematic by the Gore Commission. How such a climate emerged and how it constrains women are questions that should be examined as part of the project to reinvent government.
The above discussion by no means exhausts the issue areas in public administration that might be viewed fruitfully from a feminist perspective. Feminist research on communicative practices, for example, is another issue area where taking a feminist per spective might prove fruitful. In addition, Stivers identified several issue areas in public administration that would benefit from feminist study, including the quest for neutrality, the model of the ideal public servant, administrative discretion, and t he administration state. Together, these issue areas form the beginnings of a feminist research agenda in public administration, as well as an outline for reinventing government from a feminist perspective.
The reinventing government debate ideally proves that no "one best way" exists to organize the public sector. The Gore Commission Report builds a persuasive case for entrepreneurial government, while this essay has attempted to build a persuasive case for a feminist perspective. For many years, feminist scholars have been arguing for just such a redefinition of government practices, but given women's marginal position in the public sector, feminist scholarship, not surprisingly, has been relegated to t he disciplinary margins of public administration. For too long public administration has denied the presence of gender as an analytic category by presenting administrative reality in gender-neutral terms. The Gore report, as noted above, presents its tech niques, methods, and ideas for improving governmental efficiency and responsiveness as though they are all gender neutral. Feminist theory, however, makes clear that such views are no longer acceptable or realistic. If government is to be truly "reinvente d" in the 1990s, then it cannot proceed without considering the role gender plays in the construction of administrative reality.
The task for public administration in the 1990s, then, is to begin developing a more complex, multifaceted understanding of administrative reality that encompasses the diverse experiences, problems, and knowledge of women. In so doing, general and abst ract analysis should be eschewed in favor of that which is grounded and critical. We might, in this way, begin to uncover to what extent administrative women are both different from and similar to administrative men, as well as the extent to which gender is embedded in the structures of public organizations and administrative life.
This essay is a revised version of a paper, "Reinventing Government from a Feminist Perspective: Feminist Theory, Women's Experiences, and Administrative Reality," presented at the Fourth Women's Policy Research Conference, Washington, D.C., 3-4 June 1 994.
1. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector (New York: Plume Books, 1993); Charles Goodsell, "Did NPR Reinvent Government Reform?" The Public Manager 22 (fall 1993): 7-10 . The Gore Commission Report lists four "key principles" of reinvention: cutting red tape, putting customers first, empowering employees to get results, and cutting back to basics: producing better government for less. See Al Gore, Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less: The Report of the National Performance Review (New York: Plume Books, 1993).
2. Henry Kariel, "Perceiving Administrative Reality," Journal of Politics 43 (August 1981): 728.
3. See, for example, Robert Denhardt and Jan Powell, "The Coming Death of Administrative Man," Public Administration Review 36 (July/August 1976): 379-84; Kathy Ferguson, The Feminist Case against Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 198 4); and Camilla Stivers, Gender Images in Public Administration (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1993).
4. Deborah Stewart, "Women in Public Administration," in Public Administration: The State of the Discipline, ed. Naomi B. Lynn and Aaron Wildavsky (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1990), 203-27; Stivers, Gender Images in Public Administration, 3.
5. For a thorough description of the bureaucratic method of organizing and a critique, see Ferguson.
6. M.E. Hawkesworth, Beyond Oppression (New York: Continuum, 1990), 11.
7. Recent scholarship warns against attempting to uncover experiences or knowledge that are "essential" to all women. Similarly, feminist theorists should avoid turning women's experiences into "foundations" of knowledge upon which to rest the entire feminist project. See, for example, the essays in Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference edited by Deborah Rhode (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Beyond Oppression; Susan Heckman, "The Feminization of Epistemology: Gender and the Social Sc iences," Women and Politics 7 (1987): 65-83: and Elizabeth Spellman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon, 1988).
8. See Rhode, "Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference," in Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 8; Heckman.
9. For slightly different ways to categorize feminist theory, see Rhode, "Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference," 1-9; and Christine Di Stefano's "Dilemmas of Difference: Feminism, Modernity, and Postmodernism" in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Li nda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1990), 63-82. See Camilla Stivers, "Toward a Feminist Perspective in Public Administration Theory," Women and Politics 10, no. 4 (1990): 49-65; Gore, 130-33.
10. Mary O'Brien, The Politics of Reproduction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), Sara Ruddick, "Maternal Thinking," Feminist Studies 6 (summer 1980 ): 342-67; and Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon, 1976). See, for example, Deborah Rhode's essay noted above and M.E. Hawksworth. The exceptions are Denhardt and Powell and Ferguson.
11. See Rhode, "Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference," 6; Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, "Postmoderism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory," in Feminism/Postmoderism; and Stivers, "Toward a Feminist Perspective in Public Administration Theory," 19-38.
12. For additional reading on the interpretive turn, see Norman Denzin, Interpretive Interactionism (Newbury Park, Calif.:Sage, 1989); Bruce Jennings, "Interpretive Social Science and Policy Analysis," in Ethics, the Social Sciences, and Policy Analys is, ed. Bruce Jennings (New York: Plenum, 1983), 9.
13. Jennings, 9, 16. For Jennings, interpretive inquiry is not imprisoned "in 'the native's point of view'; it may—and usually must—go beyond the agent's own limited comprehension of this situation, filling out and correcting that comprehension with a broader, more critical perspective" (14).
14. Stivers, Gender Images in Public Administration, 5.
15. Lisa Disch, "Toward a Feminist Conception of Politics," Political Science 24 (September 1991): 501.
16. For a general discussion of this approach, see Robert Denhardt, "Toward a Critical Theory of Public Organization," Public Administration Review 41 (1981): 626-35. Suzanne Franzway, Dianne Court, and R.W. Connell, Staking a Claim: Feminism, Bureau cracy, and the State (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), 47; Nancy Frazer, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 156.
17. See Judy Rosener, "Ways Women Lead," Harvard Business Review 68 (November/December 1990): 120; and Carol Edlund, "Humanizing the Workplace: Incorporating Female Leadership," in Public Management in an Interconnected World, ed. Mary Timney Bailey a nd Richard Mayer (New York: Greenwood, 1992), 85, 83.
18. Rita Mae Kelly, Mary Hale, and Jayne Burgess, "Gender and Managerial/Leadership Styles: A Comparison of Arizona Public Administrators," Women and Politics 11, no. 2 (1991): 35; Georgia Duerst-Lahti and Cathy Marie Johnson, "Gender and Style in Bur eaucracy," Women and Politics 10, no. 4 (1990): 117; Edlund, 33-34.
19. Byrna Sanger and Martin Levin,"Female Executives in Public and Private Universities: Differences in Implementation Styles," in Implementation and the Policy Process, ed. Dennis Palumbo and Donald Calista (New York: Greenwood, 1990); Elizabeth Hand ley, "Women as Managers and Managing Women," The Bureaucrat 20 (fall 1991): 15.
20. Mary Guy, "The Feminization of Public Administration: Today's Reality and Tomorrow's Promise," in Public Management in an Interconnected World; Judith Ewell, "Barely in the Inner Circle: Jeane Kirkpatrick," in Women and American Foreign Policy: Lobbyists, Critics, and Insiders, ed. Edward Crapol (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1992), 153-71.
21. Guy; Stivers, Gender Images in Public Administration; and Danity Little, "Shattering the Glass Ceiling," The Bureaucrat 20 (fall 1991): 24-28. See, for example, the chapters on women administrators in Exemplary Public Administrators, ed. Terry Coop er and N. Dale Wright (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992) or Donald Zauderer,"Reflections on Achieving Career Success: Interview with Anita Alpern," The Public Manager 22 (summer 1993): 56-59. See also Rosener and Sanger and Levin.
22. Sally Hegelsen, The Female Advantage (New York: Doubleday, 1990).
23. Denhardt and Powell, 379; Ferguson, 205.
24. J.J. Hendricks, "Women-Centered Reality and Rational Legalism," Administration and Society 23 (February 1992): 455-57.
25. Joan Acker, "Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations," in The Social Construction of Gender, ed. Judith Lorber and Susan Farrell (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990); Kathleen Iannello, Decisions without Hierarchy (New York: Routledge, 1992).
26. Nel Noddings, "Ethics from the Standpoint of Women," in Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference; Mary Jeanne Larrabee, An Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993).
27. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 174; Larrabee, 5; Gilligan, 167.
28. See Cheryl Simrell King, "Sex and Sexuality in the Workplace" (Paper presented at the ASPA/CASU National Training Conference, San Francisco, 1993).
29. See Jeff Hearn, The Sexuality of Organization (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1989), and Cynthia Cockburn, In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organizations (Ithaca: ILR Press, 1991).
30. Deborah Sheppard, "Organizations, Power, and Sexuality: The Image and Self-Image of Women Managers" (144, 154, 156); and Barbara Gutek, "Sexuality in the Workplace: Key Issues in Social Research and Organizational Practice" (56-70), both in The Sexuality of Organization.
31. Sheppard, 141. This section briefly addressed the gender dimensions of organizational behavior, but there are other significant dimensions as well, including race, class, sexual orientation, and disability. See chap. 6 in Cockburn's In the Way of Women for a full discussion.
32. U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, "A Question of Equity: Women and the Glass Ceiling in Federal Government" (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1992).
In addition to her teaching and research interest in gender and public administration, DeLysa Burnier, associate professor of political science, teaches courses and does research in the area of urban politics. She has published work on enterprise zo nes and state development policy and in 1992 was invited to give expert testimony on this subject before the Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization of the U.S. House of Representatives. Dr. Burnier is interested in interpretive approaches to policy analys is and the study of politics from a symbolic perspective. The recipient in 1992 of the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award, Dr. Burnier was awarded the Jeanette Grasselli Outstanding Teaching Award in 1995.
The author can be reached for comment at burnier@ohiou.edu