GENDER AND ADMINISTRATION

Anne Marie Goetz

There is a feature of institutional failure in in a position to contribute to this latter process through
development which has not, by and large, been a what they provide or regulate. Because of this, they can
concern of either the conventional development reflect and reproduce the pathologies of women's
administration literature, or the efforts over the last marginality which result from the interaction of a range
decade to improve the accountability of public of other institutions. At the same time, they are an
administration. It is the persistent failure of public important site for making a public stance against this
service delivery agencies to include women equitably process, and for transforming it in women's interests.
amongst the 'publics' they ostensibly serve. Feminist For this to be possible, for gender policy in
policy advocates have responded to this problem since development to be successful, it is important to
the l970s with the demand that states and development understand not just the role of public administration in
institutions 'integrate' women to development policy producing gendered outcomes, but the role of gender in
and practice. But despite the fact that the 'integration structuring power and opportunity within admini-
of women in development' is now a virtually obligatory stration, and the links between these two processes.
part of catechisms of social and economic justice in
most developing states, the pursuit of gender policy1 This article sets out a conceptual framework for the
ambitions through public institutions has improved analysis of the gender of public administration in
women's condition only at the margins of survival at development. The focus will be primarily on public
best, and has consistently failed to advance women's service delivery in the agricultural sector, as this
participation in decision-making, whether it be in the remains the institutional arena most resistant to the
family, the community, bureaucratic institutions, or admission of women's needs and interests in agrarian
the state. This persistent institutional failure to economies.
respond to women's needs and interests in development,
despite constant efforts by gender policy advocates to GENDER POLICY GOALS IN DEVELOPMENT:
adapt feminist policy ambitions to changing develop- A REVIEW OF IMPLEMENTATION AND
ment agendas, and despite the sometimes genuine good INSTITUTIONALIZATION
intentions of governments, invites theoretical attention
to the gender dimensions and politics of public The traditional technicist view of bureaucratic
administration which underwrite this particular organizations holds that administration operates on
pattern of institutional failure. meritorious principles which are gender- (and class-
and race-) neutral, and that neither the sex of
The problem here is not just that feminist policy bureaucrats, nor of policy recipients, makes a
ambitions are being ground to dust by the slow crunch difference to the objectives of policy, to the ways
of bureaucratic gears in the way of so much policies are implemented, or to the ways in which the
redistributive policy. Rather, this article will argue that interests of men and women are institutionalized in
public administration is in itself a gendered and public administration. A brief survey of the topography
gendering process, such that its outcomes, internal of public administration in development offers
organization, and culture reflect and promote the evidence to challenge these assumptions of
interests of men. 'Gender' refers to the socially gender-neutrality.
constructed and institutionalized forms of identity
which are attached to biological sex differences, and Analysts of gender policy in development have pointed
'gendering' is the process producing these forms, to a gender-specific pattern in the way public service
through the granting or withholding of significant institutions address people's needs in development.
social, political, and economic resources and values. Women are most often the objects of public
The economic and political centrality of public service administration for sex-typed services which target
agencies in development contexts is such that they are women's reproductive functions - either biological (as
I use the term 'gender policy' as a shorthand for policies designed to systems of domination, and that attempts to redress gender inequities
redistribute resources and values in development between the sexes must directly involve men. WID policy, on the other hand, has
so as to transform asymmetries of significance and power associated preoccupied itself with easing women's access to development, which
with gender difference. It is distinct from the more familiar term has tended to detract attention from the relational dimensions of their
'Women in Development' (WID) policy in that the stress on gender disprivilege.
is a reminder that men are as much constrained by as implicated in

6
ids bulletin, vol 23, no4, 1992
in the case of family planning services), or social (as in Division of Women in Development is located in its
community management services). Public admini- Population and Human Resources Department, for
stration concerned with 'mainstream' development example, clearly signals the Bank's view of women's
sectors such as industry, agriculture, and infrastructure, place. Units such as these command few resources in
tend to exclude the majority of women outright. This staff or funds. The development agencies of the UN -
exclusion is most striking in the case of agricultural the system which sponsored the international Decade
sector services, despite evidence of women's centrality for Women (1976-1985) - allocate just 0.2 per cent of
to subsistence agriculture in many agrarian economies. their overall budget to projects which benefit women;
Across Africa for example, where women are less than 1 per cent of FAO projects specify strategies to
responsible for 60 per cent of total agricultural output reach women farmers (Staudt 1990:5).
and 80 per cent of food production (Downs 1991),
women farmers receive less than two per cent of From the point of view of the distribution of
extension contacts (Lele 1991:58; Staudt l978a,b; responsibility, labour, and power between women and
1985). Kathleen Staudt has observed that the bias men as workers in public administration, it is possible
against women farm managers increases in intensity as to map out gender divisions in the administrative
the value of the agricultural service increases (Staudt structures of most states along horizontal and vertical
l978b), and this is true for a range of other agricultural lines, both across public institutions at a collective level
institutions such as marketing boards, research and within them. Women bureaucrats are to be found
institutions, and credit agencies (Downs 1991). That most often in institutions on the margins of the state
these services overlook women farmers raises serious apparatus: in the service sectors such as nursing,
doubts about the merit-based principles which community care, nursery and primary education,
supposedly guide bureaucratic processes of need involved in activities often modelled on extensions of
identification and satisfaction. women's domestic work. This gender segmentation
occurs in public institutions devoted exclusively to
Staudt's important early study of agricultural these concerns, or in isolated policy desks within
extension in Kenya pointed to the absence of clear 'mainstream' agencies - as is the case with 'home
gender policy goals as the cause of administrative economics' units in agricultural development agencies.
neglect (l978b:40 1). But although it has since become Illustrative of this gendered functional division is again
customary to espouse such goals, outcomes remain the case of agricultural extension services in Africa,
broadly similar. For example, despite policy rhetoric where women are mostly absent from the ranks of
claiming gender-egalitarian approaches in both state extension agents trained in crop production: in the
and non-governmental rural credit and income- mid-l980s on average less than three per cent of
generating programmes in Bangladesh, studies have African extension agents were women, with a
shown common and consistent gender-differentials in maximum of nine per cent in Nigeria, and most of these
project implementation. Fewer women than men are were trained in home economics (Berger 1984;
members of these programmes, but even where they Hirschmann and Vaughan 1984).
form a majority, as in the Grameen Bank or the
Bangladesh Rural Action Committee, the credit they Even in these sex-typed specializations, women rarely
receive is not proportional to theÈr representation as break through management hierarchies to reach policy-
members. Individually, they receive credit in much making positions. Where governance, economic
smaller amounts than men, training is for low-profit, management, and coercion is concerned in more
sex-stereotyped activities, and unlike men, their central state institutions such as the legislature, the
programme membership may be made conditional on judiciary, revenue collecting services, the police, and
their acceptance of family planning measures (Feldman the military, women virtually disappear as policy
and McCarthy 1984; Saffilios-Rothschild and makers, managers, and administrators.
Mahmoud 1989; Goetz 1991).
The political history of feminist perspectives on In the past, feminist explanations for the 'misbehaviour'
development and efforts to institutionalize women's (Buvinic 1986) of gender policy, for the marginalization
interests has followed a similar trajectory of marginali- of women's interests within public institutions
zation. Bureaux concerned with gender and develop- generally, and for women's difficulties in climbing
ment in states and development administrations, and managerial hierarchies, have tended to suggest that
their research and policy initiatives, are often perched women's disprivilege is largely the outcome of the
on the peripheries of 'mainstream' development con- operation of basic institutions through which social and
cerns; never in the economic planning divisions, often economic values are distributed: the market, the
in the social welfare sectors. That the World Bank's household, and private property.2 But from the above
2 In this the Gender and Development (GAD) literature follows a to be traced to extra-organizational Constraints 00 women's
pattern in the rich and also vast popular and academic feminist educational levels and labour-force distribution (e.g. Poliert 1981;
literature on women and work which follows 'human capital' Wallace 1982).
assumptions. Thus women's negative organizational prospects tend

7
brief inventory, it is evident that the ideological and What produces this gender-blindness in administration?
material factors which contribute to women's poverty Perhaps because the absence of women as workers in a
and to the devaluation of their productive and range of public administrations is so striking, it is
reproductive contributions may actually be reproduced tempting to speculate that there is a relationship
by the way women are made objects of policy attention, between the gender of bureaucratic agents and the
the way their interests are (or are not) institutionalized, targets of their interventions. On the other hand, are
and the way they are distributed as workers within women's experiences of organizations, both as workers
public administration. and clients, part of a substantive set of gendered power
relations which saturate organization and administration
Feminist analyses of the gender-differential impact of and shape the relationship of administration to society?
public administration in development have exposed the If the latter is true, then merely adding women on as
fallacies of pretensions to gender neutrality in state independent variables affecting the bureaucratic form
policy by demonstrating that citizenship and public and bureaucratic outcomes is not enough to explain
policy clientship are gendered. But the persistent mis- how and why bureaucracies discriminate against
routing of corrective gender policy measures, and the women.
institutionalization of women's interests on the
peripheries of planning, powerfully suggests that
administration is also gendered. The shortcomings of the failure to recognize gender as a
dimension motivating bureaucratic forms and actions
WHAT A GENDERED THEORY OF (interconnected with other dimensions such as race and
ORGANIZATION WOULD HAVE TO ADDRESS class), are evident in one of the first systematic feminist
explorations of organizational behaviour, Rosabeth
What has to be explained is the persistence of male Moss Kanter's study of Men and Women of the
domination across a range of relationships, both Corporation (1977). Moss Kanter suggests that
internal and external, sustained by public service observed sex differences in managerial styles, and
agencies in development. But for much of conventional women's promotional problems reflect less on women's
organization theory, male domination in organizational gender than on their minority status as a group and
structures and outcomes is such a commonplace as to their underrepresentation on organizational authority
simply not excite theoretical attention or even hierarchies. In other words, what appear to be sex
empirical exploration. Even critical perspectives on differences are problems of powerlessness: 'power
organizations which focus on features of control, wipes out sex' (1977:201), and by extension, the gender
power, and exploitation within organizations have characteristics of men and women are irrelevant to their
remained oblivious to the role of gender in shaping prospects within organizations (1977:291-2). But this
organizational power relations (e.g. Bacharach and cannot account for gender differences in experiences of
Lawler 1980; Schaffer 1984; Wood 1985). Certainly minorities in organizations: male nurses, for example,
this is the case in the enormous body of literature which seem to manage to avoid much of the negative
applies public administration theory to the project of evaluation and lack of job mobility which women face
enhancing the responsiveness of rural development in male-dominated organizations. In contrast, women
bureaucracies to local needs.3 fail to reach executive and policy-making positions in
A striking example of this is David Leonard's 1977 organizations in which they actually are dominant, as is
study of the determinants of the responsiveness of the case in health, social welfare, and primary
agricultural extension workers to farmers in Western education institutions, as well as in much of the
Kenya. Though his use of organization theory voluntary sector.
produces a set of systematic empirically based
propositions on supervision, staff motivation, feedback, It also cannot explain why such women as do succeed in
and managerial structures to explain the determinants climbing organizational hierarchies seem to find it
of extension worker behaviour and the consequent class useful to adopt sociological attributes of masculinity in
and ethnic biases of the extension service, he entirely their dress and deportment, in their management
overlooks its glaring gender bias - namely, the neglect styles, or their family responsibilities; minimizing the
of women's farming needs in the agrarian economy. demands on their time of domestic responsibilities
Clearly, the 'farmer' whose productivity is at the 'very (Hale and Kelly 1989:146-7). In other words, biological
centre' of Leonard's and the agricultural service's and social masculinity seems to confer a certain amount
concern (Leonard 1977:2), is not a woman. In contrast, of organizational power.
Staudt's study of the same service, in the same period in
the same region, demonstrates how stark this oversight This is an insight which equal opportunities policies,
is: fully 40 per cent of the farms in the area were animated by the suggestion that women's organizational
female-managed (Staudt 1978a:442). powerlessness is a function of their underrepresentation,
See Montgomery 1988 for a review of two decades of research on rural development administration in developing countries.

8
have failed to take on board. As a consequence, equal ADMINISTRATION AND THE GENDERING OF
opportunities policies have yet to fundamentally alter THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE
gendered opportunity structures within organizations;
they have helped individual women, but not women as Understanding gender as constitutive of, not contingent
a group (ibid:7-13; Lovenduski 1989). They have also to, administration involves tracing the connection
yet to make appreciable inroads on upper-level between gender, power, and organization. The essence
management and on features of organizational of this connection is suggested by Joan Scott's proposal
structures and cultures which women may find that the definition of gender 'rests on an integral
oppressive and obstructive; features such as the connection between two propositions; gender is a
organization of the working day around a time schedule constitutive element of social relationships based on
which does not accommodate childcare demands, or perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is
performance reviews which punish women for taking a primary way of signifying relationships of power'
time out for childbearing. Simply 'adding women on', (1986:1067).
whether as individuals to organizations, or as categories That gender is constitutive of social relations is familiar
to conventional organizational theory, fails to either enough in the 'domestic' sphere, where gender signals
challenge male dominance or specify the connections culturally specified divisions of labour, reward, and
between masculinity and organizational power. In this power in the family or kinship structures. But it is less
conception, bureaucracies are not culpable, and the evident ifi the case of supposedly gender-neutral
politics of gender privilege are assumed to occur 'public' organizations.5 Indeed, implicit in the ideal-
somewhere else. typical Weberian bureaucracy which is based on a
separation of a public world of rationality and
What is needed, then, is an appreciation of the efficiency from a private world of emotional and
connections between gendered social relationships, personal life, is the notion that neither gender, nor any
and gendered organizational relationships in public other 'structures of domination which (have) no
administration. The gendered 'institutional materiality' rational character' (Gerth and Mills 1958:244) have any
(Poulantzas 1973) of organizations must be understood, place in the merit-based impersonal organizations
as must a history of this process, if feminist policy which replaced rule by patronage. But it is Scott's
ambitious are to be realized through public insistence on a connection between gender and power
administration. which invites consideration of the role of gender in the
constitution of bureaucratic administration. This is
because bureaucracy, as a form of institution and as an
In recent years, feminist students of organizations have organizing practice, is one of the most conspicuàus
argued for a re-theorization of the field of organizational features of the way power and authority are organized
analysis from a gender perspective across a range of and expressed in modern states (Foucault 1981).
expressions of the bureaucratic form: from bureaucratic
procedures and discourses (Ferguson 1984; Mueller Recent socialist-feminist analyses of social policy and
1985), to bureaucratic hierarchies and management public administration in the West have demonstrated
structures (Acker 1990; Zeliman 1976), to the effect of that part of the definition of the state and the
the sex composition of the workforce on workplace delimitation of its proper sphere involves the active
cultures (Izraeli 1983; Yancey-Martin 1985). The codification and policing of the boundaries between the
recognition that sexual harassment may be a 'private' and the 'public' (Fraser 1989). In most
component of organizational structure and not the modern states, these boundaries also delineate
expression of individual deviance (MacKinnon 1979; gendered spheres of activity; where the paradigmatic
Gutek 1985), has provoked a concern to theorize subject of the public and economic arena is male, while
sexuality, not just gender, as a key feature of that of the private and domestic arena is female. By
organizational power (Hearn and Parkin 1983; Hearn confirming the institutional arrangements which
et al 1989). Since rather little of these feminist distinguish the private from the public, public
approaches has made its way to the empirical study of administrations are involved in the social and political
development administration in the gender and institutionalizing of the power asymmetries attached to
development literature,4 I will apply insights from this gender difference, through policy infrastructures
feminist literature to such information as is available on which confirm and reinforce women's contractual
gender in development administration. inferiority in the family and the market.
An important and consistent exception has been the work of the WID In the 'public/private' dichotomy I am discussing here, I take the
policy analysts Kathleen Staudt and Jane Jaquette, who were among 'private' to refer to the realm of the 'domestic' - the family, and not
the first to direct attention to the relationship of gendered authority to the socio-economic arena of 'civil society'. As Susan Moller 0km
structures in states and public service agencies - or what Staudt has points out, there is considerable ambiguity in current usages of the
identified as 'gendered bureaucratic resistance' to patterns of gender 'public/private' distinction, with the 'private' often taken to include
inequality in society. See Staudt 1978a and b; 1985; 1990; and Staudt two major societal zones: the (formal) market and a range of other
and Jaquette, 1988. social institutions, and the family (1991:68).

9
This process, through which connections are forged different styles of management and interaction, but
between men's private and public power, occurs at who may find the expression of these preferences
several levels. To begin with, the modern state penalized.
structures so celebrated by Weber were built out of a
contract which, in its Lockean renunciation of political In the third place, men's monopoly over public forms
patriarchy and its relegation of the family to the of material and power resources gives them control
periphery of the political organization of 'free and equal over the means of symbolic production (Mackie
men' quite literally and explicitly excluded women 1987:28) with the consequence that greater cultural
(Held 1990:103; Pateman 1988; 0km 1991). This was significance has come to be attached to public - and
justified by the assumption that unitary gender hence implicitly male - activities, while domestic -
interests existed both within the family and in relation and implicitly female - activities have been
to the public sphere, such that men as a collectivity inferiorized. This is reflected in organizational value
were thought to be qualified to represent women's systems, in symbols of success and failure, in the
interests, just as individual male heads of households gendering of particular types of skills, of permitted
presumed to do this (Hale and Kelly 1989:4-5). This behaviours, and of locations in physical space. In all of
has had enduring implications for the role of public this, symbols of masculinity are associated with
institutions in constructing cultural distinctions achievement and accomplishment, and femininity with
between a masculinized public sphere and a feminized the opposite. Here too, the symbolic significance of the
private sphere. gendered public/private divide may also be employed
to devalue the contribution of women individually and
In the second place, men's literal, physical monopoly of as a group by associating their presence and affectivity
public organizational space meant that organizational with their roles in the private sphere - a feminizing,
structures, hierarchies, norms, rules, and functional domesticating, and sexualizing of their public
categorizations are designed to accommodate men's, identities. To quote Pateman again, women 'have not
but not women's, socially-constructed labour and time been incorporated into the patriarchal structure of
capabilities - namely, their relative freedom from capitalist employment as 'workers'; they have been
childcare and domestic responsibilities, and the fact incorporated as women; and how can it be otherwise
that they cannot give birth. As Pateman notes, when women are not, and cannot be, men? The sexual
'apparently universal categories, such as the individual, contract is an integral part of civil society and of the
the worker, the social or the political, are sexually employment contract; sexual domination structures
particular, constructed on the basis of male attributes, the workplace as well as the conjugal home' (1988:142).
capacities, and modes of activity' (1986:7). This
bureaucratic grammar of internal rules and procedures The most blatant expression of this is the problem of
directly affects the experiences of women as individual sexual harassment, now recognized to be more
bureaucrats, where the obligation to adapt to prevalent than ever supposed across a range of
organizational forms and practices designed for the institutions, from the shop floor (Pollert 1981), to white
bodily presence of men imposes a Procrustean template collar work (Gutek 1985; Di Tomasso 1989), to the
over their very different bodily functions and family ivory tower (Ramazanoglu 1987). Inescapably, sexual
responsibilities. Unable to guarantee the same quantity harassment, along with the associations made between
of time and emotional and physical energies to the symbolic expressions of masculinity and power,
organization as men can, women are penalized by suggest that sexuality, as much as gender, is
exclusion from promotional opportunities, if not by constitutive of organizational relationships. The
exclusion from the working world altogether. Weberian supposition that administration can be
separated from social relations is exposed as false once
women trespass on organizational spaces.
This literal male dominance has shaped organizational
structures and workplace cultures, such that organi-
zational hierarchies, languages, rationalities, means of This schematization of the connections between
coordination, and interpersonal interactions are gendering processes, organizations, and power calls
ascribed a gendered character. Whether these attention to the historically produced nature of
distinctive features of administration, such as the masculine dominance in organizations. Third World
valorization of instrumental rationality, top-down public administrations, with different histories and
command and communication systems, specialization, traditions of socialization (albeit often deeply influenced
as well as aggressive, goal-oriented styles of manage- in structure and practice by both Western colonial
ment, represent innate sex characteristics, is a matter of administrations, and in the context of aid dependency,
some debate and will be considered below. Again, this by donor agencies), can be expected to have
has implications for the experiences of women as institutionalized different expressions of male power,
individual bureaucrats, and as a group, who may favour and to be differently involved in the creation and
lo
policing of boundaries between public and private national, can be expected to have sharply gendered
provision and affectivity, depending upon domestic organizational structures, and strongly masculinized
gender politics. This will have implications for the workplace cultures.
problems and prospects of feminist policy ambitions in
developing countries. Attention to the historically and Historically, many bilateral aid agencies had their
culturally specific nature of gendered dominance origins in the colonial services that administered the
politics within organizations provides a reminder that outposts of empire, as is the case with some European
the structures, cultures and the power associated with bilaterals, or in military supply services transformed
gendered agency, and the way this is institutionalized after World War II to deliver Marshall Aid to Europe,
in administrative relationships, is a socially constructed as is the case with USAID and CIDA. These
but not a necessary part of administration and is institutional legacies of imperalist or militarist projects
therefore open to change through purposive gender were structured around sharp gender divisions of
politics. labour, signalled by such practices as the marriage bar
(which was not lifted until 1972) restricting married
The role of public administration in gendering women's employment overseas in the British foreign
processes is of particular importance in developing services (Ashworth 1985). A particularly masculine
countries, where it has played a much more central role institutional culture was symbolized by the ways these
in the direction and running of the economy than in organizations valorized myths of adventurous and
most Western states. The imperatives of modernization violent frontier masculinities (provided with a
and (sometimes) distributional justice highlight and sustaining foil by the virtuous memsahib at home).
justify the interventionist responsibilities of the state in Malingering symbolic legacies of this gendered process
the economic and social activities, both public and can be found in the militaristic jargon in development
private, of its citizens. For this reason the political planning languages (Leys 1969), and in the belligerently
functions of the state are less straightforwardly chauvinistic masculine cultures of agency outposts
detached from its administrative apparatuses, and the (Tendler 1975; Staudt l985).6
boundaries between 'public' and 'private' can be
differently drawn. National development admini- Within certain national contexts, development admini-
strations are politically central in these contexts for strations may acquire powerfully masculinized organi-
another reason - they are the central arenas for zational structures and cultures for cultural reasons.
competition over resources where conditions of Isolated institutional ethnographies by women rural
scarcity and generalized poverty have disrupted development agents in North India suggest a highly
traditional structures of provision. This makes them masculinized workplace culture (Mehendale 1991;
one of the most important locations from which Hale 1987). In Bangladesh's purdah culture, rural
gender-linked interpretations of people's needs and development is seen as a man's job. Field work requires
appropriate social roles emanate. high mobility, close involvement with large numbers of
strangers, and time and energy commitments which
In what follows, gendered organizational relationships, stretch far beyond the nine-to-five of an office job;
structures, and cultures are explored and illustrated activities, all of which are features of male prerogative
with examples drawn mainly from rural development in Bangladesh, and female forfeiture. Further, strong
administration in Bangladesh. cultural prohibitions on women mixing with non-kin
men saturate workplace cultures, making them more
GENDERED ORGANIZATION explicitly masculine than in contexts lacking such
RELATIONSHIPS, STRUCTURES, AND intense taboos.
CULTURES
This gendered nature of rural development admini-
All organizations evolve characteristic structures stration is not just a reflection of culture, nor does the
adapted to the demands of the labour process, and process of minimalizing women's contribution happen
develop workplace cultures which have their own automatically. In my study of five NGOs and three
conventions, formal and informal rules, norms of state rural development administrations in Bangladesh,
cooperation and conflict, and channels for exerting I found that organizational structures reinforce these
influence. For several related reasons, some historical, gender divisions by restricting women staff to work on
some inherent to the organization of development women's programmes which offer few opportunities
work, and some specific to particular cultural contexts, for management roles, and by channelling them into
development administrations, both international and gender-typed training - a process of gendered
Interestingly, the foreign development administrations of non- establishment of cross-organizational performance incentives for
imperialist countries tend not to demonstrate these sorts of positive gender policy implementation. These agencies include
characteristics, and have been the most open to gender policy, to the CIDA and the bilaterals of the Scandinavian Countries. On CIDA
expanded employment of women bureaucrats, and to the see Staudt 1991:23; and on SIDA see Himmelstrand 1990.

11
ghettoization and stigmatization (Goetz 1991:268). in rural development are likely to have a stronger
These stigmatizing choices about the placement and gender-transformative effect than will the simple
development of women staff were frequently justified addition of women development agents.
by senior male administrators on the grounds that
women's family-related mobility constraints made Some feminists argue that certain salient defining
them ineligible for promotions which required features of bureaucratic structures such as
relocation, that women lacked the necessary qualifi- hierarchical calibrations of authority, exclusivist
cations for training in 'male' specializations, and that in patterns of management and decision-making,
any case, cultural taboos prohibited them from working functional divisions of labour, and the specification of
with a male clientele or moving freely in the rules and procedures to guide behaviour and exchange,
countryside. are themselves expressions of male domination and
construct an organizational environment which is
The cumulative effect of these structural features of particularly hostile to the participation of women and
rural development organizations is to slow women's to the receptivity of bureaucracies to the needs of their
advance within organizations, curb their potential female clients (Ferguson 1984). Do the flatter
influence, and signal that they are not full organizational organizational hierarchies and more open, participative
members. But these effects are not reflections of management and decision-making structures of some
something immutable in women's social position; collectivist grassroots organizations or some NGOs
rather, they are the consequence of treating organi- provide for more gender-egalitarian participation?
zational rigidities as immutable. Thus, it is true that
women's reproductive responsibilities condition their The record on this is mixed, not least in the cases of
physical mobility and energy in the public realm to a feminist organizational experiments which have found
greater extent than men. This is especially so for that collective and consensual management does not
childbearing and childcare. But these constraints on eradicate problems of domination, let alone co-
women's time are unlikely ever to be resolved if they are ordination (Yancey-Martin 1990; Leidner 1991; Gould
treated as constraints on the organization, rather than 1979). Studies of collectivist organizations which
as challenges to be adjusted to by organizational promote participatory democracy, non-hierarchical
structures. As regards women's qualifications, it is also decision-making, and minimization of status differences
true in Bangladesh that women enter the working have found no necessary correspondence between
world less well trained than men because of alternative organizational forms and feminist attitudes
institutionalized obstacles to women's education. But if and outcomes (Yancey-Martin 1987:547).
the organizations in my sample were taking these
constraints as given, the women were not; the majority Sally Yudelman's study of the Inter-American
of single women were studying privately to improve Foundation found its relatively flat, decentralized
their qualifications. operation actually contributed to the invisibility of
gender policy issues, despite its participatory, non-
Finally, as regards the claim that cultural taboos on hierarchical style and its large complement of female
male and female interaction was the greatest obstacle to staff (1991). The tendency amongst certain social
women's capacity to move out of gender-stigmatized movements to romanticize alternative organizational
organizational functions, it is true that gender relations forms obscures the limits to how far staff can sustain
in Bangladesh appear to be amongst the least negotiable the amount of energy, experimentation, and uncertainty
in the world (Cain et al 1979). But like anywhere else, required by these organizational forms. Rothschild-
these taboos are not fixed in stone. Proof of this is that Whitt and Whitt's study of collectivist organizations
an outpost of one of the NGOs studied, the Rangpur- describes serious worker resentment of the extra time
Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) had experimented required for internal decision-making (1986).
successfully with assigning women Group Organizers
to men's agricultural groups. As one of these women At the very grassroots level, participatory group-based
explained, once her displays of competence in organizational approaches for women of the same class
agricultural knowledge gained her the respect of the are particularly favoured by some feminist gender
men's groups, the men voluntarily changed their policy advocates as a formula for democratic decision-
customary meeting time from the evenings, when making and the building of solidarity networks to
travel alone for this woman was dangerous, to the day support mutual ventures. Yet it can be precisely this
(Bokul Rani Mondol interview, cited in Goetz very local, molecular structure of association, especially
1991:233, 237). Other NGOs had been able to where it includes women of the same kin group, which
overcome constraints on women's public mobility by can harbour some of the greatest tyrannies that women
arranging for them to move in groups for support and experience. Some women may crave a form of
protection. These gender-specific modifications to the organizational contract free of the small print which
organizational structures supporting the labour process deeds over their unpaid labour to sustain ascriptive
12
loyalites, even between women, such as the relationship automatically fostered greater receptivity amongst its
of the daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. male staff to women's needs, then it cannot be assumed
that local-level receptivity to women's needs can
On the other hand, there is evidence that open necessarily be engineered through administrative and
command and communications styles can admit of managerial reforms,
more sensitivity to women's interests. In some
international NGOs, such as the Ford Foundation, an These findings caution against assuming that organi-
equity-oriented value system and participatory and zational structures can be bearers of gendered power
decentralized management structures seem to have independently of the principles and agents which
encouraged the inclusion of gender policy in animate them. They also point to the need to
development as a major agency goal, with 6 per cent of understand the role of the gender of bureaucrats, as
agency funds directed to women's programmes in the well as their class, ideologies, and professional
mid-1980s (Kardam 1989:143). But as Nuket Kardam ambitions.
suggests, this shift in agency priorities did not occur
until women staff became the majority (53.2 per cent) THE GENDER OF BUREAUCRATS
of agency employees. This suggests that egalitarian
management structures on their own were insufficient Does the gender of bureaucrats make a difference to the
to prompt change. way organizational relations are managed, internally
and externally? This question has inspired considerable
In my comparison of the Rangpur-Dinajpur Rural debate on a number of levels.
Service with the state's Rural Poor Programme in
Bangladesh, differences in managerial and admini- Since the Jacksonian experiments in bureaucratic
strative style which allowed for a greater bottom-up populism, a recurrent theme in American organization
flow of information and lower-level involvement in theory is the notion that bureaucratic receptivity to
decision-making in the NGO accounted for a range of client needs is likely to be enhanced where bureaucrats
differences between the organizations in motivation, and clients share similar backgrounds and sociological
commitment, and productivity (Goetz 1991:207-254). characteristics. This is the basis of representative
The NGO was also more successful in its group-based bureaucracy, which seeks to mirror relative percentages
development activities with women. However, of certain sociological groups in the ranks of public
differences in the receptivity of male and female field servants, on the assumption that these representatives
workers to the needs of their female clients, as will act as trustees for the interests of their particular
suggested by their attitudes towards, and routines of group. Studies of experiments with representative
interaction with their female clients, were found to cut bureaucracy, however, suggest that only weak
across both organizations. Women field workers in correlations exist between background and attitude
both programmes more readily identified women's (Denhardt 1984), and that incentives to defend the
subsistence activities as legitimate work requiring interests of a particular social group pale in comparison
productivity-enhancing interventions rather than to incentives to conform to organizational systems of
welfare subsidies. They were more interested than their motivation and reward (Downs 1967:233).
male colleagues in finding ways of implementing stated
programme goals of empowering women, to the extent, Do women bureaucrats represent women's interests?
in one case, of initiating legal rights training and Prominent women policy makers across different
supporting legal claims against husbands who violated national contexts have been found to consistently
family law. articulate gender-specific policy concerns on such
issues as child care, equal pay, maternity benefits, and
Women field workers in the state agency also so on. (Mueller 1982; Hale and Kelly 1989; Dahierup
occasionally used their discretion to subvert agency 1988; Hirschmann 1991). Differences also exist
policy in the interests of their female clients. There between male and female policy makers on broader
were a few striking cases of women field officers policy issues such as the environment, violence in
turning a blind eye to loan investments in sari foreign affairs, poverty, and domestic affairs. Jahan's
smuggling from India, adulteration of edible oil, or study of women parliamentarians in Bangladesh found
grain hoarding, all of which were officially forbidden, women, unlike men, consistently placed poverty over
but much more lucrative than officially sanctioned low- national security as a policy priority (1982).
profit and sex-stereotyped activities such as livestock
rearing or paddy husking (Goetz 1991:207-302 On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that
passim). If neither the rigid operational procedures of women hired to work in development administrations
the state programme prohibited its women staff from will necessarily be feminists. On the contrary, studies
responding to their clients' needs, nor the more open of women in high-level positions have found them to be
internal communications structure of the RDRS highly ambivalent about being identified as feminists
(Mueller 1982; Hale and Kelly 1989; Dahlerup 1988). personal advance. They construct women's identities
For many of these women, success is both a function as subserviant and primarily sexual - a 'sex-role
and expression of their ability to conform to spillover' (Gutek 1985:40) which brings roles
organizational structures and cultures by taking on encouraged in private into public work relationships,
sociological characteristics of men in their dress, undercutting women's autonomy from the domestic
deportment, managerial styles, and most importantly, sphere by defining their identities on the same terms as
in their capacity to minimize the demands of the home. at home - namely, as structured around providing
In a study of women state administrators across services for men.
California, Texas, Utah, and Arizonia, women were
shown to be three times as likely as their male One corollary of the argument, mentioned in the last
colleagues to be single, divorced, and childless (Hale section, that organizational structures and management
and Kelly 1989:144). As a minority in most cultures inherently express men's interests, is that an
organizations, women have the least interest in alternative, and distinctively 'feminine', approach to
challenging dominant agency practices because of the organization and management might exist. Kathy
precariousness of individual career positions, and their Ferguson's radical feminist case against bureaucracy
effective 'minority' status outside of organizations posits the existence of a 'feminine' ethic of care,
reinforces their need to conform within them nurturing, and responsibility to support her case for an
(Dahlerup 1988). alternative organizational form to bureaucracy
(Ferguson 1984). Sociological studies of gender
Of course, women are to be found at different levels in differences in management styles do find women to be
bureaucracies, and perhaps those found in greater more open and participative, more comfortable with
numbers at field/operational levels may be in a team work, more responsive to learning from mistakes,
stronger position to represent their clients' needs than and less authoritarian than men (Rosener 1990). But to
the few token women at the top of hierarchies. The assume that these differences are innate, as Ferguson
evidence offered in the last section of differences implies, rather than active and strategic responses to
between male and female field workers' attitudes and the unequal organizational distribution of power, is to
behaviour towards their clients suggests this. But it simply reinforce the discursive stability of notions of
cannot be assumed that these differences are an difference that devalue women's work in the public
expression of some natural solidarity or sisterhood sphere. 'Nurturing' styles of management once again
between women field workers and their beneficiaries. bring private gender attributes into the public sphere.
Whatever the class backgrounds of women field Since 'feminine' styles of management may be a
workers, their primary reference group is likely to be response to a lack of power in organizations, it may be
their superiors or colleagues, not their clients. To counterproductive to advocate them as an expression of
expand on women field workers' constructive use of female empowerment within organizations, unless
their discretion, creative strategies are needed to build ways are found to invest them with social and political
links between the interests of field workers and clients, power.
and to build cultures of mutual support for women in
rural administrations. I will return to this in the next Whether greater numbers of women within organi-
section. zations will prompt gender-sensitive changes in
organizations' internal structures and external effects
Also militating against women's capacity to express and remains an empirical question - there are simply not
enact oppositional perspectives on administration is the enough cases of gender-balanced organizations to
operation of workplace cultures which trivialize permit comparison. Here it has simply been suggested
women's organizational presence, as studies in the that there is no simple correlation between women staff
West (Cockburn 1991; Ramazanoglu 1987), and in the and gender-sensitive administration. Too many other
South (Hale 1987; Holloway and Mukurasi 1991; variables, such as organizational structure and culture,
Goetz 1991) have shown. In the rural development intervene to inhibit women's capacity to express
administrations I studied in Bangladesh, the increased oppositional interests. This will have implications for
employment of women had triggered reactions from policies to increase women's organizational presence
individual male colleagues and superiors which ranged, and enhance their performance.
with increasing violence, from deference control,
negative stereotypes and sexual innuendo, insults and CONCLUSION, AND SOME POLICY
slights on competence, to exclusion from formal and IMPLICATIONS
informal networks, undermining of legitimate authority
through non-cooperation, and sexual harassment To recapitulate, I have argued so far that public
(Goetz 1991:276). These reactions carry gendered administration in development has been a poor
statements about worth, space, status and ability, and instrument for implementing gender policies. This is
erect powerful obstacles to women's capacity for not just because it reflects gender relations in society,
14
but because, as a part of social relations, public Again, the Rangpur-Dinajupur Rural Service (RD RS)
administration is itself a gendering process. It has in Bangladesh provides an example of an interesting
played an active, discretionary role in the construction experiment in improving the receptivity of its women's
and maintenance of men and women's unequal access staff to local women's needs. In 1988 it introduced a
to social and economic resources. This perspective may 'Central Women's Co-ordination Committee' based on
help illuminate the processes and relationships through a series of representative committees drawn from
which other inequalities, such as those of class, race, women, at different organizational levels. It was
and the North-South divide, are reproduced in public designed to channel views up from the field to the
administration. This argument also raises questions centre, and as such included at its bottom rung
about the very nature of administration and representatives of women programme beneficiaries
organization, first by dispelling pretensions of gender- (Nellis n.d.). Not only did this structure allow for
neutrality, but more importantly, because the focus on communication and exchange, between women staff
gender moves analysis beyond questions of structure and beneficiaries, but it symbolically ruptured the
and process to questions of power relationships both distinction between the organization and its social
within administration and between it and society. context, thus contributing to a process of democrati-
zation. It also provided women in the organization with
On this logic, new forms of public administration in the the possibility of developing cultures of mutual
productive and social sectors will have to take rather support; a potential resource for challenging male
different forms than currently envisaged, if a dominance practices within the organization.
commitment to gender equity is to be a genuine part of
corrective efforts to reverse institutional failure in
development. The focus on gendered power relation- The RDRS example gives reasons for optimism that
ships shows that tinkering with structures, procedures, organizations can change, but it has to be acknowledged
or representative bureaucracy is inadequate to that in the current development climate, changes of the
challenge power systems. These systems, of course, are sort just mentioned are unlikely. Even minimal
embedded and endorsed in the broader context in measures like equal opportunities policies are resented
which public administrations are embedded - the in contexts of high male unemployment. And policies
state. This means that gender-transformative bureau- to ensure gender equity are precisely the ones which
cratic change cannot occur independently of a political suffer where concerns with cost efficiency, and
context supportive of women's empowerment; a introducing market incentives in public administration
context with effective women's interest groups and a dominate. Such policies are not about cost-saving
responsive state. Of course, this conclusion removes (indeed the opposite, given the costs of replacing
practical organizational changes to an inaccessible women's domestic labour), they are not short-term
level, and in any case raises issues which cannot be issues, and successful implementation cannot be tied to
explored here. There are, however, some immediate market incentives and rewards. On this logic, the shift
implications for public administration which arise from in development administration in the 1 980s towards
a gendered understanding of organization. fiscal coordination, and market-oriented forms of
structural adjustment cannot be seen as a gender-
Effective forms of public administration which both neutral change. Women have been the first to suffer,
respond to women's needs in development and which and to bear the costs, of conservative pro-market and
recognize connections between internal gender politics anti-bureaucratic strategies which have sought to
and external organizational outcomes, will have to find reprivatize the costs of reproduction, both within and
ways of actively disorganizing gendering processes outside of bureaucracies.
within the organization and between it and society.
This can be done by ensuring genuine equity in service
delivery, such that the needs of women clients are not Unlike the market, where women do not tend to fare
sex-stereotyped and stigmatized. Internally, this might well, public administration has the power to distribute
be done by introducing women's behavioural and value resources for reducing gender discrimination in access
preferences into the hierarchies, work rhythms, to productive resources, to promulgate laws and
symbolic systems, and organizational facilities which policies in women's interests, to offer protection from
currently reflect men's preferences. Childcare could be gender violence at home and in the community, and to
brought into the institution, as could flexible time alter public discourses about women's inferiority
management adapted to the requirements of extra- through information systems and education. All the
organizational life. Motivational structures could be more reason, then, to persist in efforts to transform
adapted to enhance the discretion of women field public administration to reflect women's interests in
workers. development.

15
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