Gender and Public Organization: A Quasi-Experimental Examination of Inclusion on Experiencing and Reporting Wrongful Behavior in the Workplace

• Author: Helen H. Yu,David Lee
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026019836196
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

836196PPMXXX10.1177/0091026019836196Public Personnel ManagementYu and Lee
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Public Personnel Management
2020, Vol. 49(1) 3 –28
Gender and Public
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A Quasi-Experimental
Examination of Inclusion
on Experiencing and
Reporting Wrongful
Behavior in the Workplace
Helen H. Yu1 and David Lee1
Abstract
Most public organizations share values and beliefs and socially constructed patterns
of action that guide the behavior of their employees, resulting in their unique
organizational culture. Existing literature on police organizations describes an
unmistakable culture that celebrates masculine values and a social structure that
exists purposely and specifically to repress female officers. Using a survey data set
of 1,114 female federal law enforcement officers, this research employs coarsened
exact matching to examine perceived inclusion and its effects on women experiencing
disrespect by male colleagues and incidences of sexual harassment and sexual
discrimination. In addition, reporting behavior is captured for female officers who
experience wrongful conduct. The study finds that women who report working in
an inclusive organizational culture are less likely to experience pervasive negative
attitudes from their male colleagues or occurrences of sexual harassment and sexual
discrimination. However, the existence of an inclusive organizational culture did not
show a significant difference in reporting sexual harassment or sexual discrimination
if women experienced such wrongful behavior.
Keywords
inclusion, organizational culture, gender, law enforcement, sexual harassment, sexual
discrimination
1University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
Corresponding Author:
Helen H. Yu, Assistant Professor of Public Administration, Department of Public Administration,
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2424 Maile Way, Saunders Hall 631, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
Email: helenyu@hawaii.edu

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Public Personnel Management 49(1)
Since the issuance of Executive Order 13583 (2011)—Establishing a Coordinated
Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal
Workforce—many federal agencies have created diversity and inclusion councils to
identify and remove barriers to equal employment opportunity while engendering a
culture of inclusion (Office of Personnel Management [OPM], 2011). The OPM
(2016) defines inclusion “as a set of behaviors (culture) that encourage employees to
feel valued for their unique qualities and experience a sense of belonging” (p. 6).
However, fostering a culture of inclusion can be difficult for traditionally masculine
organizations such as law enforcement that provoke a particular view of women and
the nature of policing. As such, the topic of organizational culture—shared values and
beliefs and socially constructed patterns of action that guide the behavior of its mem-
bers (Jennings, 2012; Jung et al., 2009; Ott, 1989; Rice, 2004; Schein, 2010)—in pub-
lic agencies that are grossly underrepresented by women is particularly relevant.
Existing literature on police organizations describes an unmistakable culture that
celebrates masculine values and a social structure that exists purposely and specifi-
cally to repress female officers (Dick & Jankowicz, 2001; Franklin, 2007; Hughes,
2011; Paoline, 2003; Waddington, 1999). These values form the basis of an organiza-
tional culture detrimental to the very skill sets—communication, critical thinking,
problem solving, and conflict resolution—that women are known to bring into law
enforcement (Women in Federal Law Enforcement, 2015). Despite women’s contribu-
tions to the profession, organizational culture within law enforcement remains male
dominated, and women who challenge these cultural norms are at risk of nonaccep-
tance, sexual harassment, and sexual discrimination that adversely affect work assign-
ments, training opportunities, and promotions (Brown, 1998; Dick & Jankowicz,
2001; Haarr, 1997; Keverline, 2003; Rabe-Hemp, 2008; Seklecki & Paynich, 2007;
Yu, 2015, 2017). An in-depth look at organizational culture in law enforcement shows
there is a need for fundamental change in the police culture; however, missing from
this scholarship is the examination of inclusion and its effects on women experiencing
and reporting wrongful behavior in the workplace. This article aims to fill this gap.
This research used a survey data set from sworn female officers (n = 1,114)
employed by a large federal law enforcement agency. Coarsened exact matching
examines perceived inclusion—an organizational culture that values and supports
women and treats women fairly and equitably—and its effects on experiencing disre-
spect by male colleagues, sexual harassment, and sexual discrimination, as well as
female officers’ actual reporting behaviors when they experience wrongful conduct.
Coarsened exact matching, which is a quasi-experimental method, enables us to match
female officers who perceive their organization as inclusive with those female officers
who perceive their organization as noninclusive using their individual and work char-
acteristics. By utilizing coarsened exact matching, endogeneity bias derived from indi-
vidual and work characteristics is reduced to provide the effects of inclusive
organizational cultures on overcoming female officers’ occupational barriers and
obstacles. Although this study targets a specific federal workgroup, its implication has
far-reaching consequences for other occupational workgroups promoting inclusion
and gender equity in public employment.

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Yu and Lee
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The article is structured in the following manner. The first section offers both a
theoretical and a practical framework on gender representation and organizational cul-
ture and draws hypotheses from previous literature. The next section introduces the
data and method as well as empirical results. The final section offers discussion, impli-
cations of the findings, and the limitations of this study for future research.
Theoretical Framework
Representation
The theory of representative bureaucracy—passive, symbolic, and active representa-
tion—is an appropriate framework to examine the impact women have in a dispropor-
tionate work environment, likely altering an agency’s organizational culture. Passive
representation contends that a workforce should have the same characteristics as the
overall population it serves (Choi, 2011; Clark, Ochs, & Frazier, 2013; Meier &
Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Mosher, 1982; Smith & Monaghan, 2013). In other words, if
women represent 47% of all working Americans (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017),
then the percentage of women working in all occupations should accompany those
figures. Unfortunately, the proportion of women across all occupations and organiza-
tions are not evenly distributed, as is the case for the target population of this study,
resulting in a noninclusive culture commonly associated with law enforcement.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, women account for just 15.5% of all
sworn federal law enforcement officers (Reaves, 2012). Despite their higher employ-
ment figure—for example, women represent 6.5% of all officers in state agencies,
12.2% in local police departments, and 13.9% in sheriffs’ offices (Burch, 2016;
Langston, 2010; Reaves, 2015)—research has shown that the noninclusive culture
commonly associated with state and municipal policing also pervades throughout fed-
eral law enforcement (Keverline, 2003; Schulz, 2009; Yu, 2015, 2017). However,
recent research on symbolic representation contends that the sheer presence of passive
representation in a public organization can affect how citizens assess the legitimacy of
that organization (Gade & Wilkins, 2013; Riccucci, Van Ryzin, & Lavena, 2014;
Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). For example, Riccucci et al. (2014) found that the
gender composition of a police organization, in this case more women, can causally
influence people’s judgment of the organization as being both fair and trustworthy in
the context of handling domestic violence complaints, a crime in which women are
most often the victim. As women’s passive and subsequent symbolic representation is
not expected to change anytime soon in law enforcement, a noninclusive culture will
likely remain. To combat the disproportion of female representation, scholars of active
representation contend that, under certain settings, female members have the ability to
use their discretion to foster an improvement of equity in the workplace and/or enact
policy outcomes for those with similar gender origins (Meier, 1993; Mosher, 1982;
Sowa & Selden, 2003). For example, Meier and Nicholson-Crotty (2006) found that
an increase in female police officers is associated with an increase in reporting sexual
assaults and arrests made for sexual assaults. Regardless of mode—passive, symbolic,

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Public Personnel Management 49(1)
or active—the applicability of representative bureaucracy toward inclusion and orga-
nizational culture is especially interesting because of the long history of law enforce-
ment as a male-dominated profession.
The scholarship on proportional representation, commonly known as tokenism,
also clearly demonstrates the impact of a disproportionate work environment. Kanter
(1977) argues that...