Book Review: Stivers, Camilla. (2002). Gender Images in Public Administration: Legitimacy and the Administrative State (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 184 pp

• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X02250115
• Published date: 01 March 2003
• Date: 01 March 2003
• Author: Roddrick A. Colvin
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0734371X02250115 REVIEW

REVIEWOFPUBLICPERSONNELADMINISTRATION / March 2003

BOOKREVIEW

Stivers, Camilla. (2002). Gender Images in Public Administration: Legiti-

macy and the Administrative State (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,

184 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734371X02250115

A senior administrator in state government told me that 15 years ago he

knew that health policy was not important because the agency meetings he

attended were 95% women. Today he knows just how important health

policy has become—those same department of health meetings are now

95% men. As health policy issues demanded more monetary resources and

became salient, men replaced women at the decision-making level. To be

fair, my colleague was making an empirical observation and was perhaps

exaggerating. He was not trying to be malicious, but his point does depict

one of the many disparities based on gender in public administration. His

comment also highlights the value of books like Gender Images in Public

Administration, by Camilla Stivers, that give scholarly attention to the role

of gender in the public sector.

Stivers contends that the foundations of public administration are

infused with dilemmas of gender. Specifically, she argues that our assump-

tions about expertise, leadership and management, and virtue are weighted

with masculine meanings that are often masked under the rubric of neutral-

ity. For Stivers, masculine and feminine images are broader than their bio-

logical concepts; they include notions of race and class. Because public

administration masks feminine images while building on masculine images,

the attitudes and actions of public administrators can be distorted by gen-

der, race, and class. Stivers originally posited her ideas 10 years ago in the

first edition of this book. This second edition updates her efforts.

The author begins by exploring the familiar and tangible disparities that

exist in public administration based on gender. She does an excellentjob of

highlighting the persistent problems of pay inequity and lack of mobility

(acknowledging the glass ceiling and glass walls) in the bureaucracy.Unfor-

tunately, women still earn less than men for equal work. Furthermore,

women often find themselves with limited opportunities to advance verti-

cally or horizontally within organizations. Stivers connects these disparities

to the historical role of women in the public sector.

After highlighting persistent disparities, Stivers focuses the next three

chapters of her book on defending and exploring her basic thesis of gender

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BOOK REVIEW

Review of Public Personnel Administration,Vol. 23, No. 1 March 2003 83-86

© 2003 Sage Publications