This paper examines how gender influences key organizational functions within public bureaucracies, including performance, accountability, team building, morale, and customer service. Drawing on Camilla Stivers's critique of institutional discrimination, Frederick W. Taylor's and Elton Mayo's historically dismissive views of women in the workplace, and Montgomery Van Wart's broader discussion of elite-system beliefs, the paper traces the gap between formally stated gender equality and the discriminatory practices that persist in public institutions. It concludes by presenting Stivers's counter-argument that women are fully capable of sustaining and enhancing all five organizational performance criteria.
The world has evolved significantly over the past several decades, and evidence of this evolution is apparent not only in globalization and technological advancement, but also in the realm of human relations, treatment, and rights. Major progress has been made in addressing the historical discrimination faced by certain groups, including women. While the formally stated position in most democratic societies is that men and women play an equal part in public offices and that entry into such positions is not limited by gender, the actual situation frequently indicates otherwise.
Camilla Stivers (2002) finds that discrimination against women continues to occur within public institutions on grounds such as the belief that men do a better job of managing positions, people, and situations, or that women are distracted by their domestic responsibilities and therefore perform at inferior levels. The number of women occupying public positions remains significantly lower than the number of men, and the perceived explanation is that only exceptional women have the ability to perform jobs that were initially designed — in practice, if not in principle — for men.
In this context of forwarded equality but practiced discrimination, a question arises regarding the actual ways in which gender impacts specific organizational functions — such as performance, accountability, team building, morale, and customer service. Despite being focused on several broader perspectives of public administration, Brian Fry's Mastering Public Administration: From Max Weber to Dwight Waldo (1989) contains useful references to how genders are perceived within the administrative community — perceptions that help illuminate this question.
One of Fry's essays quotes Frederick W. Taylor's view on the supposed incapacity of women to perform effectively in an organized context: women are described as "less efficient than men, less regular in their attendance, and should look forward to getting married." In other words, Taylor's conclusion is that women have a negative impact on all five organizational performance criteria — personal achievement, accountability, team building, morale, and customer service.
A similar view is shared by Elton Mayo, who argues that women tend to talk too much among themselves, fail to become properly subordinate, and as a result distract the attention of the entire group. According to this perspective, women negatively affect concentration and, by extension, performance and the other organizational criteria under consideration.
The perceived inferiority of women compared to men is also reflected in sources cited by Montgomery Van Wart in his Changing Public Sector Values (1998). Van Wart presents the subject within the broader context of discrimination against various groups, but notes that the gender criterion has sometimes been considered less prominent than other forms of discrimination — such as those based on race or social status — since more dramatic injustices occurred along those lines. Nevertheless, the foundation of all these discriminatory practices was a belief in elite systems — chiefly the belief that certain groups, including men over women, were inherently more capable. From this perspective, the assumption is that the presence of women tends to reduce the quality of organizational performance, accountability, team building, morale, and customer service.
Returning to Camilla Stivers, she finds these accusations to be as far from the truth as possible. Stivers argues that women do in fact have the ability to sustain and increase organizational performance, support accountability for their own and others' actions and decisions, foster team building and the benefits it creates, improve levels of employee morale, and even raise levels of customer satisfaction by enhancing the quality of customer service.
"Elite belief systems underpin gender and racial discrimination"
"Stivers refutes claims and affirms women's organizational value"
Van Wart, M. (1998). Changing Public Sector Values. Taylor and Francis.
You’re 80% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 2 sections.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.