Closing the Gap: How Mayors’ Individual Attributes Affect Gender Wage Disparities in Local Bureaucracies

• Author: Kendall D. Funk,Angel Luis Molina
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X211002610
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X211002610

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2022, Vol. 42(3) 553 –573

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X211002610

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Article

Closing the Gap: How Mayors’

Individual Attributes Affect

Gender Wage Disparities in

Local Bureaucracies

Kendall D. Funk1 and Angel Luis Molina, Jr.2

Abstract

Gender inequities in public organizations manifest in various forms, including gaps

in leadership roles and compensation. Increasing women’s representation in elected

offices may reduce gender inequities in the public sector. This study examines whether

women’s representation in local elected offices reduces gender wage disparities

among men and women serving in Brazilian municipal executive bureaucracies. The

findings suggest that municipalities with women mayors and larger proportions of

women on the city council have smaller gender wage gaps in the municipal executive

bureaucracy than those with men mayors and few women councilors. Furthermore,

statistical models that account for diversity among men and women mayors in terms

of their age, education, and partisanship suggest that even men mayors that likely

hold progressive attitudes do not reduce gender disparities to the same degree

as most women mayors. These findings underscore the importance of women’s

representation for reducing gender inequities in the public sector.

Keywords

women’s representation, local governments, representative bureaucracy, gender pay

equity, comparative public administration

Representation in public sector governance is an important vehicle for the reduction of

gendered disparities. Contemporary research finds that the representation of women in

elected leadership and among unelected personnel is associated with significant

1School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

2School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Angel Luis Molina, Jr., Assistant Professor School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University,

411 N. Central Avenue, Suite 400, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA.

Email: almolin5@asu.edu

1002610ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X211002610Review of Public Personnel AdministrationFunk and Molina

research-article2021

554 Review of Public Personnel Administration 42(3)

improvements in outcomes for women in general (Keiser et al., 2002; Meier &

Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Wilkins & Keiser, 2006). However, while promoting greater

levels of representation can ameliorate many forms of gender inequity, women remain

underrepresented in influential public sector positions, whether they are elected,

administrative, or street-level roles (DeHart-Davis et al., 2020; Holman, 2017; Nelson

& Piatak, 2019). In addition, women are more likely than men to experience various

forms of discrimination in the workplace, including unequal expectations in social

roles and disparate levels of pay (Alkadry & Tower, 2006; Feeney & Stritch, 2019).

Adding further complexity to this picture is the reality that individuals grouped into

broad social categories such as gender are themselves diverse; heterogeneity exists

among group members, creating overlapping systems of discrimination and disadvan-

tage for those in doubly marginalized groups (Crenshaw, 1991). In the case of women,

differences in individual attributes and preferences, along with the presence of other

salient identities, such as social class, religion, race, or political affiliation, increase the

complexity of the relationship between women’s numeric representation and the rep-

resentation of all women’s interests (Feeney & Camarena, 2021; Minta & Brown,

2014; Reese, 2019). Moreover, women within an organization are not the only actors

capable of representing the interests of female personnel, as men can also choose to act

in the interests of women for various reasons (Nugent, 2019; Valdini, 2019).

In this study, we examine the relationship between women’s representation and

gender disparities in public sector wages. Rather than focus exclusively on gender

inequity within a single tier of a governance system, we offer a broader picture of

representation’s impact by analyzing whether women’s representation in elected lead-

ership leads to smaller gender wage disparities for women working within the bureau-

cracy. There are reasons to expect that women elected officials will be more likely to

recognize gender disparities within in their organizational setting, and more inclined

to ameliorate these disparities due to their identification as members of this histori-

cally marginalized group (Holman, 2017). However, evidence also indicates that pas-

sive representation in government agencies does not always produce outcomes that

reflect strong levels of identification among members of the same group (Wilkins &

Williams, 2008, 2009).

In order to better account for the complex nature of representation and organiza-

tional outcomes, we also analyze how the heterogeneity of individual attributes among

women and men in elected leadership affects the gender wage gap. This allows us to

examine not only the influence of gender, but also whether leaders with certain attri-

butes are more likely to act in the interests of women working within their broader

organizational setting. By accounting for the potential significance of diverse indi-

vidual attributes, our analytic approach engages with an important dimension of equity

and representation within the workplace. Such attributes are key to understanding the

conditions under which passive representation leads to a substantive impact within

public agencies.

Brazilian local governments serve as the empirical setting of our study. As Bishu

and Kennedy (2020) highlight, research on representation in government organiza-

tions is concentrated within a handful of policy domains and largely within the context