Looking for Postmodern Public Administration Th eory 151
Public administration scholars overwhelmingly acknowledge that the fi eld is an
applied one and debate ways of making their research more useful to practi-
tioners, one aspect of the real world of public administration has gone relatively
unnoticed—the dynamics of gender in public organizational life. Since women
fi rst entered government work in the mid-19th century, their experience of life
in public agencies has been fundamentally diff erent from men’s. Women have
been paid less, done a disproportionate share of the routine work, struggled
with the question of how to accommodate themselves to organizational prac-
tices defi ned by men, brooded over how to turn aside men’s advances without
losing their jobs, and fought to balance work demands with what was expected
of them—what they expected of them—on the domestic front. Th ose who have
made it to the middle ranks fi nd themselves bumping up against a glass ceiling
that keeps a disproportionate number of women from top positions. (2002, 37)At the core of all of these challenges, based on the application of postmodern
theory to feminist perspectives in public administration, is the matter of image.
Again, following Stivers:
Public administration’s stress on autonomy, on not simply taking orders but
instead making discretionary decisions, is a culturally masculine concern in ten-
sion with the stereotypically feminine obligation to be responsive. One could
argue that other aspects of public administration’s political role are similarly
feminine—for example, the norm of service. At the level of cultural ideology,
it is women who serve others while men are served; women unselfi shly devote
themselves to helping the unfortunate while men pursue self-interest, albeit
sometimes the enlightened variety. If what makes public administrators diff erent
from other experts is their responsibilities of service and responsiveness, then
as a group they too, like women, do not fi t the professional role very well. Pro-
fessionalism is too masculine for the feminine aspects of public administration.
In this context the eff ort to assert the worth of public administration in such
terms as professional, helmsman, agent, objective scientist, and neutral expert
is an eff ort to acquire masculinity and repress femininity or project it outward.
In this sense, public administration is not only masculinist and patriarchal, it
is in fundamental denial as to its own nature and conceptually and practically
impoverished as a result. Women are not the only ones in public administration
faced with the gender dilemma. Th eorists may extol the virtues of the responsive,
caring bureaucrat who serves the public interest, but the argument will face up-
hill sledding until we recognize that responsiveness, caring, and service are cul-
turally feminine qualities and that, in public administration, we are ambivalent
about them for that very reason. (2002, 57–58)Th e feminist perspective in public administration probably traces to the work
of Mary Parker Follett (1918, 1924). Parker Follett argued that administrative