Welcome!

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Capitol Building pre- Inauguration.

Hello, I am new to wikipedia and I am very excited to explore all that it has to offer. I am a college student and I am currently enrolled in a Women and Gender Studies class where I look forward to learning more about the concepts of the glass ceiling and the struggles that women in power face. I am also an avid reader and I am very interested in law and American History.

Articles I am interested in working on:
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  • Women in Government
  • Glass Ceiling
  • Women in positions of power
  • Mommy Track
Citation:
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This article [1] will be helpful when exploring the representation of women workers in the bureaucracy on the Women in government wikipedia page.

Annotated Bibliography for work on Bureaucracy

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1. [1]Smith, Amy (2013). "Some Ceilings Have More Cracks: Representative Bureaucracy in Federal Agencies". The American Review of Public Administration: 43.1: 50-71- via ProQuest

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The author of this Article, Amy Smith, has a PhD in public administration and policy and has done extensive research on organization behavior and public managment. This article takes a direct look at the representation of women in the American Bureaucracy. The article asks the questions of the role that bureaucrats play on our democracy, what we know about women and men in the current representative bureaucracy landscape, and lastly the link between the leadership of men and women. The author of the article conducts a survey to 118 federal regulatory agencies to count the number of women who are top administrators. When defining what passive representation is the article makes the connection between what positions of power women hold and how it affects the people especially women of America. Another main goal of the article is to show how women are often put in positions headed for failure so that they may take the blame. The last point the article makes is that older agencies which are more established have less women in leadership roles than small agencies. I will be using this article to share data on the representation of women and its effects when looking at the United States Bureaucracy, the article does a good job of providing statistics along with a cause and effect for the data found.

2. [2]Siadel, Judith. "Agency Leaders, Gendered Institutions, and Representative Bureaucracy". Public Administration Review. 65.2: 158-170- via ProQuest

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The author of this article, Judith Siadel, is a professor at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy. She has researched the topic of gender and political representation extensively. She also served as a Director of the Center for Women in Government & Civil Society. This article focuses on representative democracy and how gender may affect it. The main focus of the article is to explore the link between gender of executive branch agencies leaders and the policies they pursue. The author conducts a national survey of state agency leaders to explore under what influences agency leaders promote policies that are beneficial to women's interests. They conducted 24 interviews with women agency heads and 10 with men agency heads to explore connections to what topics women represent. The article comes to the conclusion that women are 2% more likely to promote policy that benefit women then men are to promote policy that benefit men. I will be using this article to point out the areas that women represent in the American Bureaucracy and why they represent them. The study helps to show that there is a discretion in which topic areas women represent in the bureaucracy.

3. [3] Dolan, Julie (2000). "The Senior Executive Service: Gender, Attitudes, and Representative Bureaucracy". Journal on Public Administration Research and Theory. 10.3: 513-29 -via ProQuest

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The author of this article, Julie Dolan, has a PhD in Political Science from American University and has published many books on women and gender studies in politics. This article aims to examine the contributions that women make in the Federal Senior Executive Service. The author conducts a survey administered to federal executives to help explore the what women executives press for women issues. The results show that women push for women issues when in an office or bureau that deals with women issues. I will be using this article to further explain the gap of fields that women represent to those that men represent.

4. [4] Hern, Erin (2017). "The Trouble With Institutions: How Women's Policy Machineries can Undermine Women's Mass Participation". Politics and Gender. 13.3: 405-31- via ProQuest

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The author of this article, Erin Hern, has a PhD from Cornell and specializes in Comparative Politics and Gender and Development. This article provides an idpepth look at the problems within the United States Government when it comes to women's participation. The author conducts a survey of women in different levels of governmental agencies and congress. They also take a look at voting patterns and the representation of women's rights. The so called "rules of the game" are called into question and the author examines how it creates a bias against women that in turn lowers women participation in many political avenues including the bureaucracy. This article will be especially helpful in my contribution with statistics of women representation and exact examples of gender inequality in the United States democratic system.

5. [5] Kaiser, Lael R. (2002). "Lipsticks and Logarithms: Gender, Institutional Context, and Representative Bureaucracy" The American Political Science Review. 96.3: 553-64.

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The author of this article, Lael R. Kaiser, is a professor at the University of Missouri and has a PhD with a specialty in bureaucratic politics. This article takes an in-depth look at representative bureaucracy and its relation to gender. The focus of this article is to prove that passive representation results in active representation when related to sex. To test this theory the author conducts a survey of female test scores in various exams with female teachers. The survey results proved the theory that passive representation does indeed lead to active representation. This finding relates to bureaucracy because it finds that to actively implement policy related to women's issues their must be an accurate representation of women in the bureaucracy and in leadership positions. This study sets up a bases for future tests and surveys to be done to further show the link between representation and implementation. I would use this article to provide a picture of how passive representation (the degree to which the social characteristics of the bureaucracy matches those of the population) can affect active representation (the actual process of who represents who in a bureaucracy).

6. [6] Hong-Hai, Lim (2006). "Representative Bureaucracy: Rethinking Substantive Effects and Active Representation". Public Administration Review. 66.2: 193-204-via ProQuest

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The author of this journal, Lim Hong- Hai, is a professor at the University Sans Malaysia he holds a doctorate and specializes in the politics of public administration. This article describes the importance of passive bureaucracy and its substantive effects. The article also describes how minority bureaucrats can make their own changes by their administrative behavior. Hong- Hai does recognize that minority bureaucrats do provide more substantive effects for their own social group. The author proves these points by citing studies done by other researchers that focused on the active representation and looking at the link to where representation is tied to actions. I would use this article to specifically show how minorities in the bureaucracy act and what policies they support. I would then link this idea to the research on passive and active representation.

7. [7] Newman, Meredith (2001). "The Gendered Bureaucracy: Agency Missions, Equality of Opportunity, and Representative Bureaucracies". Women & Politics. 22.3- via ProQuest.

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The author of this article, Meredith Newman, is the director of the School of Public Administration at FIU she is published in the areas of public management. Her article aims to expose how the implementation of equal opportunity policies in bureaucratic agencies has not advanced the interests of minorities. She points out that while the equal opportunity policies aim to achieve demographic and substantive representation in government, most of the time these approaches are inadequate. The author then uses this information to provide a new conceptual mind set that sets out to focus more on active representation. The author points out that just because an agency may have equal representation it does not always translate to that agency making decisions that benefit everyone. The article looks in-depth into how agencies are set up and the policies that they actually represent. The author utilizes surveys and research done by countless researches including a survey that collected data from on-going studies of senior-level administrators in Alabama, Arizona, California, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin. From this research the author concludes that state bureaucracies are heavily gendered and the efforts by bureaucratic agencies to hire more women to actual have a system of active representation. I will use this article to describe why agencies tend to be gendered, how this process in turn affects policy, and supports the need for affirmative action.

8. [8] Sneed, Bethany (2005). "Glass Ceilings and Glass Walls: Racial and Gender Occupational Segregation in State Bureaucracies". Worldwide Political Science Abstracts- via Proquest.

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The author of this article, Bethany Sneed, is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Michigan University. Her research interests include representative bureaucracy, gender issues in public administration, public personnel management, and local government concerns such as special districts and city–county consolidation. The aim of her article is to expose how occupational segregation in turn affects public administration. The author proposes the following two questions, (1) What changes have occurred to alter “glass walls” across departmental functions? (2) What impact does departmental function have on the salary of women? The findings from a case study of Michigan's state level bureaucracy reveal that although occupational segregation has decreased over the past two decades, it is still prevalent. Gender-based occupational segregation is linked to the department function. Redistributive departments in the bureaucracy have much lower levels of occupational segregation. The studies data was drawn from Michigan's Department of Civil Service's annual work force report. An interesting finding from the authors research was that women appear to be most successful in historically male dominated fields. I will be using this article to show a specific example of a bureaucratic system, that of Michigan, that displays the characteristics of gender segregation and how it relates back to department function. It will be helpful having an exact example to support claims of gender segregation in bureaucratic agencies.

Contribution (working draft)

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Women in bureaucratic agencies often face different circumstances and focus on different issues than those of their male counterparts. A key issue that women face as working members of the bureaucracy is a lack of representation in leadership roles, this lack of representation leads to less women taking an active role in policy implementation which is a vital function of bureaucratic agencies [1]. A study of 118 agencies in the United States bureaucracy found that only 39% had women in top leadership roles. In the top two tiers of bureaucratic agencies 36% of the leadership positions were held by women [1]. It is also important to point out that women have greater representation in leadership roles in federal government regulatory organizations than in other areas of United States government such as public policy making positions and private corporate boards.

While the bureaucracy overall holds a higher proportion of women and can be seen as representative to the whole population, the upper leadership positions of bureaucratic agencies are male dominated. The upper levels of management in bureaucratic agencies are the essential part of the policy making apparatus of government [1]. A study conducted on agencies with female leaders found that women in upper level positions will actively seek to hire more women into lower level positions within that agency [1]. The process of women in upper level positions hiring more females within their bureaucracy agency leads to the feminization of certain bureaucratic agencies (3). These feminine policy areas may include welfare, health, and education. In a study of leadership positions of 48 agencies working in a feminine policy area, 25 agencies had a female top leader. Of the 67 agencies working in a masculine policy area identified as economics, foreign trade, crime and public safety, agriculture, etc. only 19 had a female leader [1]. The idea that women represent issues that are seen as important to other women such as civil rights, education, labor, and public health is a key feature of the interlinking system of passive and active representation.

Passive representation refers to the idea that occurs when the demographic characteristics of the bureaucracy symbolize the demographic characteristics of the population. Active representation occurs when bureaucrats act in a way that benefit those members of the public who have similar characteristics to themselves. Passive representation is a characteristic of the bureaucracy while active representation is the process that bureaucrats take when they make decisions that benefit those similar to them [3]. Bureaucrats with a specific demographic background have experienced significantly similar socialization and therefore share similar values with members of their social group. These shared values and beliefs lead bureaucrats to behave in ways that increase the substantive benefits for their social group [6]. This idea specifically of active representation supports the idea that when faced with choices, women will attempt to make decisions that support other women [3].

The study of 118 federal regulatory agencies found risk, as defined by the study as the interaction between visibility and legislative complexity, to have a statistically significant effect on the proportion of leadership roles that women hold. Those agencies with a higher risk factor have a higher proportion of women in the top leadership position [1]. This phenomenon is described by the glass cliff effect.

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Smith, Amy (2013). "Some Ceilings Have More Cracks: Representative Bureaucracy in Federal Agencies". The American Review of Public Administration. 43.1: 50–71 – via ProQuest.
  2. ^ Saidel, Judith. "Agency Leaders, Gendered Institutions, and Representative Bureaucracy". Public Administration Review. 65.2: 158–170 – via ProQuest.
  3. ^ a b c Dolan, Julie (2000). "The Senior Executive Service: Gender, Attitudes, and Representative Bureaucracy". Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. 10.3: 513–29 – via ProQuest.
  4. ^ Hern, Erin (2017). "The Trouble With Institutions: How Women's Policy Machineries can Undermine Women's Mass Participation". Politics and Gender. 13.3: 405–31 – via ProQuest.
  5. ^ Keiser, Lael R. (2002). ""Lipstick and Logarithms: Gender, Institutional Context, and Representative Bureaucracy"". The American Political Science Review. 96.3: 553–64.
  6. ^ a b Hong-Hai, Lim (2006). ""Representative Bureaucracy: Rethinking Substantive Effects and Active Representation"". Public Administration Review. 66.2: 193–204 – via ProQuest.
  7. ^ Newman, Meredith (2001). ""The Gendered Bureaucracy: Agency Mission, Equality of Opportunity, and Representative Bureaucracies"". Women & Politics. 22.3 – via ProQuest.
  8. ^ Sneed, Bethany (2005). "Glass Ceiling and Glass Walls: Racial and Gender Occupational Segregation in State Bureaucracies". Worldwide Political Science Abstracts – via ProQuest.