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Path Towards Change by Camilla Stivers —

A Summary

Title: Path Toward Change

Author: Camilla Stivers
Publication: Camilla Stivers (2002) Gender Images in Public Administration:
Legitimacy and the Administrative State

The problems with public administrative theory from a feminist

perspective are:
a) the match between widespread ideas about masculinity and the norms of
professionalism, leadership and management;
b) the extent to which bureaucratic structures and procedures,
administrative career patterns, and the dynamics of public organisational
life depend upon women’s disproportionate responsibility for domestic
work;
c) the administrative state’s part in sustaining gender roles that limit
women’s life choices:
d) the suppressed femininity of important administrative canons alike
responsiveness, service, and benevolence.
e) heedless universalisation of male practices and experiences which are
made to stand for humanity as a whole; and
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women.

Toward a Feminist Theory of Public

Administration
Feminist theorising doesn’t have language yet and this limitation which makes
setting forth full theories di�cult. The project is, for now, a matter of “catching
glimpses” of what might be, knowing that it is something that “must be” even
though it “cannot yet be”. It begins by exploiting the chinks that considerations
of gender have made in the armour of existing theory. An example is the para-
dox of public administration which at once depends on and denies the exis-
tence of womanhood.

What is the path toward change? A fresh look at Mary Parker Follett reveals her
relational view of reality, her experience bound idea of knowledge and her eth-
ical idea of integration as well as her implicit rejection of organisational hierar-
chy, all of which can be extremely useful for the feminist agenda.

The rei�ed place of rationality in public administration could be re-examined

from a feminist perspective. Instead of expecting women to behave “like men”
in line with conventional practice, women should be treated as “persons of self-
de�nition and on their own terms”, or in other words, “as women”. The empha-
sis on e�ciency and means–ends calculations, or instrumental rationality, must
be relaxed.

The Man of Reason who, in a state of rational boundedness or submission to

the objective reality, juggles science and ethics in order to get nearest to the
truth can be either male or female in practice. The idea however is still gen-
dered because of its reliance on boundedness. Women are a classic example of
the unde�ned and unbounded.[1] Importantly, so long as it continues to rely on
boundedness, more rationality is not going to help public administration move
beyond gender. The need is to build relationships and engage in collaborative
work that will transcend the rules for bounding concepts.

There
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governmental authority, as opposed to a set of rules imposed from above, is

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consistent with feminist ideas if not labelled as such. Also, a recognition and
adoption of responsiveness as a positive skill, notwithstanding its alleged femi-
ninity, that facilitates prudent action in trying times will create a more gender-
balanced image of the administrator.

New Images in Public Administration

Expertise

The bureaucratic obsession with the idea of neutral objectivity and autonomy
and the implicit claims of expertise and competence not only separates and de-
politicises the citizen clients, it raises the administrator to a rare�ed status
above the �eld.

[Consider the agency perspective introduced by the Blacksburg Manifesto.[2]

By talking about agency without taking into account the context of gender,
racial, and class diversity, the Manifesto is asserting that the agency perspective
takes shape in a cultural vacuum which, from a feminist standpoint, is unten-
able. No wonder then that e�orts to diversify the workplace has seen consid-
erable opposition from the establishment.]

The requirement is for a form of competence that is non-hierarchical and re-

ceptive to the perspectives of all parties at hand. The goal is to attain a midway
between scienti�c objectivity and untrammelled bias through a form of science
that is not divorced from or disinterested in but is immersed in life. Experts
should not be raised above the people but should work as collaborators and
achieve their expertise through lived experiences. The processes of govern-
ment should be humanised.

The continued insistence on e�ciency and science in administrative matters

will negatively impact democracy. By insisting on the correct answer or the one
best way, the political dimensions are forcibly sti�ed. Competence is not about
the most scienti�c answers; it is about the collaborative process.

Competence
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sacri�ces his family life for work. This notion relegates the family life and
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by extension women to a “lesser” form of existence. The proper professional

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should be a whole person who is understood to have developed in and is an in-

tegral member of a family.

Leadership

For feminists, images of leadership are questionable. The leader objecti�es,

controls, and leads. Apart from the suggestion that everyone has to be “led”, an-
other pertinent issue is that of the masculinity of leadership whether it is the
imagery or even the simple fact that most leaders are indeed men. When
women become leaders, they are forced to, unlike men, manage their gender
(be ‘inappropriately’ masculine or ‘indecisively’ feminine?).

One solution is to move more women into leadership positions. But that fails
to work in conventional organisations structured around masculinity. A more
penetrating perspective is to question the “perceived” need of leadership it-
self.[3] What about leaderless groups or groups that rotate their leadership
among members?

Existing norms of e�ciency and hierarchy even in the new entrepreneurial or-
ganisations will not allow for leaderless groups. But if we cease assuming the
needs for leaders even for a little while or in a limited area, fresher perspectives
might emerge.

Virtue

The perspective on virtue is about “resuscitating” the notion of “public virtue”

which has been suppressed by masculinity. So long as the realms of domestic
virtue (caring, benevolent, submissive) and public virtue (controlling, ambi-
tious, assertive) remain exclusive even as the public sphere depends on the do-
mestic sphere, virtue will remain problematic. Public virtue has to unite femi-
ninity with masculinity.

The image of administrator-as-citizen comes closest to this perspective. But

going further, this administrator should not only be for the citizens but should
also& be
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governance.

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Like mothers, they [the administrators] must foster growth under

conditions of complexity; like mothers, they must perform both routine
and rewarding work in the interest of others who are in a sense their
responsibility; like mothers, they must hold close (conserve
administrative resources and capacities) and welcome change; just as
mothers see their children as agents of their own lives, so must public
administrators see citizens in the same light.

The feminist perspective stresses horizontal relations. In this regard, it sees the
public and the private spheres as mutually supportive and existing on the same
horizontal plane. Awareness about this mutuality would lead to equality.

History

The tension in public administration between values and techniques is per-

vaded with gender implications. The �eld today appears to be sacri�cing values
in order to gain e�ciency bu tweaking its techniques.

Gender, race, and class are and have always been just as fundamental as the
economic and political contexts to the understanding of public administration.
It is only that they have never been recognised as such. The feminist perspec-
tive is thus essential to a full understanding of the �eld of public administration
itself whether in its present form or in its historical development.

Also, integrating gender into thinking about public administration should be

geared towards making it useful for administrative interests and not simply to-
wards “including” it. Diversity is a resource that should be tapped.

The Administrative State

The feminist perspective on the administrative state develops from lower ad-
ministrative positions where the emphasis is on the “material realities” which
have
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more than one sex with di�erent experiences in organisations. Secondly, this
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diversity must be thought of as a promising new capacity. Thirdly, the endemic

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racism and sexism in organisations should be acknowledged. Any theorisation

on the administrative state should account for these vital issues.

A feminist perspective on the administrative state would question the infatua-

tion, as has been noted before, with the Man of Reason because of his (it’s al-
most always “his”) “technical, managerial and moral expertise” and instead en-
courage the acceptance of depersonalised power.

Feminist Practical Wisdom

The idea of discretionary judgment or practical wisdom enables feminist the-
ory to integrate the themes of competence, leadership, and virtue and link
them to the exercise of power.

As a start, the Aristotelian idea of phorensis[4]or practical wisdom has to be ex-

amined from a feminist perspective. There is on, close examination, consider-
able tension about the idea and Aristotle’s views on women which has impor-
tant consequences even today.

Phorensis blends intellectual and moral capacities and brings into action the fac-
ulties of experience and emotion. As a public quality, it is practiced by rulers
and citizens. The problem is that women were not counted as citizens let alone
as rulers in Aristotle’s time and he subscribed to women’s exclusion from pub-
lic life and their relegation to the private.

To associate this idea with women, then, requires a recon�guration of what the
good polity and the good life means. It will, �rst of all, entail a demolition of
the arti�cial wall separating the public from the private so as to include the pri-
vate sphere into the conception of the good life. But it will also require a rejec-
tion of the subordination of the private to the public life so that the value of the
private sphere — at whose expense is constructed the public sphere of the
polity — is recognised.

However, despite many misgivings, many aspects of phorensis are consistent

with feminist ideas: the inclusion of emotions, the importance of context in
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Feminist phorensis in public administration would argue for connection with

and acknowledgement of the material conditions of life rather than distance
from them. It would undermine claims for universalisation of social relations.
It would require the administrator to critically re�ect upon the institutional
context in which s/he practices. It would seek to give voice to the silences and
examine that which is supressed, ignored, or taken for granted. In sum, it envi-
sions a public administration that is “concrete, situational, experience-based,
interactive and collaborative and grounded in perception and feeling as well as
in rational analysis”.

Conclusion
The ideas suggested are yet to achieve widespread acceptance and they are in-
deed only piecemeal. In any case, a holistic feminist construction of public ad-
ministration would be a “contradiction in terms”. But gender questions will
have to be constantly asked. The general discomfort that people have with is-
sues of gender seems to vindicate just how fundamental those issues are.

“Transformation will happen not as the result of selecting the future on a grand
scale but will evolve out of countless conversations and situations that bring to-
gether around particular problems.”

Footnotes
[1]
“Woman” stands for what cannot be brought within the boundaries of lan-
guage… “Woman” stands for what remains outside naming and ideologies.

[2]
The depiction of public administration as an agency. The Manifesto at-
tributes to the agency a constitutionally legitimated, subordinate-but-
independent status. (Marshall, Gary S. and White, Orion F., “The Blacksburg
Manifesto and the Postmodern Debate: Public Administration in a Time
Without a Name” (1990). Public Administration Faculty Publications. 67.)

[3]
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others the right way to approach problems, and makes them want what
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the leader wants (i.e. motivates them).

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[4]
The ability to deliberate rightly about what is conducive to the good life gen-
erally.

PUBLISHED BY

jackofalltrades
I am a chronic procrastinator. View all posts by jackofalltrades 

 Apr 20, 2017  jackofalltrades  Administrative Theory  Camilla Stivers, Feminist

Theory, Path Toward Change, Public Administration, Summary

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