Women and Public Administration

International Perspectives

This new book is the result of an international research project that spanned nearly a decade. Authors from a half-dozen countries discuss women's roles in public administration in the context of their overall participation in the labor force. Women and Public Administration presents some astounding results derived from the authors’research into a particular country's government, politics, and the role of women in that country.

The authors, women born and currently living in India, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, and the United States, discuss four main topics: the number and level of female civil servants in the highest ranks of at least two bureaucracies, one concerned with traditionally female roles and one concerned with traditionally male roles; the career histories of these women; an institutional description of women in public bureaucracies; and the perceptions of women in public administration concerning discrimination and equality policies. This important book also describes historical, demographic, economic, and governmental information and women's views of barriers, access to training and advancement, and the general social climate for women employees at various levels within the bureaucracies.

Researchers, aware of cultural and language differences and the dangers of imposing a Western model on non-Western cultures, used questionnaires and interviews to obtain much of the information for this study. Each country has its own unique story involving history, the structure of the labor market, the organization of government, and the socialization patterns of the culture, as well as the current patterns of interaction between men and women and current public policies affecting these matters. Women and Public Administration contains much valuable information for everyone interested in women's roles in bureaucracies around the world.