Equal Employment Opportunity: Women Bureaucrats in Male‐Dominated Professions

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Sebawit G. Bishu,Andrea M. Headley
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13178

Women Bureaucrats in Male-Dominated Professions 1063

†Sebawit G. Bishu

University of Colorado Denver

Equal Employment Opportunity: Women Bureaucrats in

Male-Dominated Professions

Abstract: The public sector prides itself on being a place where women and other marginalized groups can find

shelter from workplace discrimination. Still, gender inequities are evident in the public sector workforce. In this

article, interview data from city managers and police officers highlight the gendered internal organizational processes,

arrangements, and interactions that impact women’s experiences in male-dominated roles. Despite seemingly equal

opportunities to access and engagement in these bureaucratic roles, the findings suggest that women constantly face

gendered barriers and boundaries that directly impact their experiences on the job and their work-related outcomes.

Legislative and administrative remedies are not sufficient to eliminate gendered experiences of women in male-

dominated roles. Rather, a cultural change from within the workplace is vital to realize the efforts of civil rights laws

established more than 50 years ago.

Evidence for Practice

• Women in male-dominated roles in the public sector face covert barriers that have implications for their

daily work experiences and subsequent job-related outcomes.

• Gender inequities can be rooted and reproduced in organizational structures, processes, and the design of

work. Thus, organizational commitment to conduct an internal inventory of places where inequities are

reproduced is essential.

• Gender analysis skills are an integral part of preparing the current and future public administration

workforce to identify differential experiences and outcomes for women in public service.

Andrea M. Headley

Ohio State University

Andrea M. Headley is assistant

professor at the Ohio State University.

Formerly, she was a postdoctoral fellow

in the Goldman School of Public Policy at

the University of California, Berkeley. She

is a public management, social equity, and

criminal justice policy scholar. At the heart

of her research lies the question of how we

can create a more effective and equitable

government.

Email: headley.74@osu.edu

Sebawit G. Bishu is assistant professor

in the School of Public Affairs at the

University of Colorado Denver. She is also

a research fellow in the Women and Public

Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy

School of Government. Her research lies

at the intersection of public management,

personnel management, and social

equity. Broadly, her research is aimed at

examining factors that drive organizational

inequity with the goal of improving public

organizations’ equity performance.

Email: sebawit.bishu@ucdenver.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 80, Iss. 6, pp. 1063–1074. © 2020 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13178.

†Additional Affiliation: Research Fellow, Women and Public Policy

Program, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Research

Symposium:

Pursuit of Civil

Rights and Public

Sector Values in

the 21st Century:

Examining

Dr. Martin Luther

King Jr.’s Vision in

the Trump Era

Since the passage of civil rights legislation in

the 1960s, equal employment opportunity has

aimed to protect women and people of color

from discriminatory practices in the workforce. More

than 50 years later, despite strides made in civil rights,

male dominance persists in the workplace. Today,

women make only 82 cents on the dollar compared

with men, representing a 20 cent improvement

from 1979 (BLS 2018a, 2018b). The sex pay gap is

even worse for women of color: African American

and Hispanic women earn 68 cents and 63 cents,

respectively (BLS 2018a). In the federal government,

women earn 90 cents for every dollar their male

counterparts earn (Hatch Institute 2018). At the

local level, the pay gap is present for women in city

management roles even after accounting for human

capital and organizational factors (Alkadry, Bishu, and

Ali 2019). Similarly, Luo, Schleifer, and Hill (2019)

report that women in policing earn 84 percent of the

salary earned by their male counterparts. We know

much about the gender pay gap, yet we know less

about the lived workplace experiences of women in

male-dominated professions.

Over the last 50 years, progress in gender equity has

been achieved through a series of legislative civil rights

efforts. The twentieth-century antidiscrimination

regulatory framework in the United States was

founded on the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the

Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This era encompassed legislation responsive to

gender-based work and workplace discrimination,

including preventing sex-based wage discrimination

(Equal Pay Act of 1963), broadcasting work-life

barriers for women (Civil Rights Act of 1964; see

Guy and Fenley 2014), considering “sex” as a class

protected from employment-related discrimination

(Title VII of the Civil Right Act), enforcing the right

to prosecute discrimination (Equal Opportunity

Act of 1972), allowing women administrative leave

options (Family Medical Leave Act of 1993; see U.S.

Department of Labor n.d.), and promoting equal

pay for equal work (Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of

2009; see Sorock 2010). Despite the pivotal role of

civil rights legislation in leveling the playing field for