Response to: Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity

Response to: Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity
Staci M. Zavattaro (staci.zavattaro@ucf.edu; @StaciWithaZ)
University of Central Florida

Gender Equity in Editorial Positions

I remember the session clearly. I don’t remember the exact year, but I was fresh out of my Ph.D. program attending the annual American Society of Public Administration meeting. I went to the “ask the editors” panel because I wanted to learn the secrets to academic publishing after a string of rejections. Not surprisingly, the panel was mostly men telling a packed room how to publish in “their” journals.

One man stood to ask a question (I later learned who he was, and now I am proud to call him a friend) and instead he pointed out that essentially men were the gatekeepers of knowledge and wanted to know when editorial teams would be more reflective of the field as a whole – especially when it came to women in positions of actual power rather than as a token member of an editorial team. If you were there, too, you remember the raucous round of applause that broke out in the room. I still remember it clearly. I thought, “Holy moly I can’t believe someone asked that!” That comment took a lot of guts, but I truly believe my friend made the field more conscious of its biases.

Yet we still have a long way to go. In their blog post, Nicole Elias and Maria D’Agostino highlight several recent research papers explaining just how deep the gender disparity in the field goes. Feeney’s article made a splash on social media because it said out loud with empirical data what many of us suspected. We are making strides but still have more hills to climb. In her blog response, Pat Shields walks us through her experience as an editor, a position she has held for many years. Mary Feeney will take over the helm of the elite Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory. This year, many women have won international awards for their longtime contributions to the field. Women are gaining more powerful roles and cannot be afraid to embrace those.

For me, I am about six months into my term as editor-in-chief of Administrative Theory & Praxis. I am the first female editor of the journal, and I do not take that lightly. For me, there feels like extra pressure becoming a first, respecting the vision of those editors before, yet also pushing the journal forward into today’s reality of academic publishing that relies increasingly on metrics to show worth. It is a tricky balance for a journal like ATP because it is known as a place where people can share ideas that challenge the mainstream – yet we have to play a mainstream game. As editor, I am aware of that balance so try to remain true to our roots while also introducing new ideas and topics.

Similar to Pat’s story, my journey with ATP began when I was still a doctoral student. The first conference I attended as a presenter was the Public Administration Theory Network, the home to ATP. There I found a supportive group of scholars who pushed each other to rethink current ideas in the field, to challenge what we take for granted. Nobody laughed at my talk, so that was a bonus! I then got the guts to ask then-editor Thomas Catlaw if he had considered a special issue on social media in public administration (this was 2009 when the tools were just bursting onto the scene). He was intrigued and the next year, after I graduated, I was co-editing the special issue, and the articles from that issue remain some of the most cited in the journal. My first academic publication appeared in ATP. It is coming full circle for me with both the journal and the Network, as in 2017 I brought my own doctoral student to the annual meeting and he now is an editorial assistant on our team.

There are lessons to be learned from my story, from Pat’s, from Mary’s. For me, I will tell you, using a common Instagram meme, “find your tribe and love them hard.” In other words, find a group of scholars who support your work and make that your home. I have attended the Network meetings for nearly a decade now and still come home learning something new each time. Second, know your worth. If you are named to a position of power (that is the key here), trust you earned it for your merits. Impostor syndrome is a real and affects women more often than men. I still sometimes wonder if I am making the right decision when it comes to manuscripts sent in, but I am confident the decisions are the best for the journal. It is getting easier as I settle into the position.

Third, be kind. Oftentimes academia feels like a game. It feels like you need to be in the “cool kids club” to get ahead or rely on a “famous” dissertation chair to propel your career. While maybe that does help, perhaps I am naïve enough to still believe that kindness and hard work pays off. When people ask me for feedback as an editor, I give it to them. I try in my all decision notes, whether positive or negative, to give authors additional feedback. It takes time, but I have received so many thank-you notes so far. So really be kind to people you meet. Learn from them. Send emails just to say hello if you are thinking about someone. Kindness comes around.

Fourth, stay true to what you know. In my research, I study place branding and marketing. People still in our field of public administration think that’s a strange topic. I have been encouraged over the years to study something more acceptable, more known – after all, you want to earn tenure don’t you? I never listened. Maybe I was stubborn, but I believed in what I was researching. Heck, I am good at what I research so why change? Stay your course. If you study something people still think is odd, but you know in your heart it is important, do it. See how it fits within larger conversations in the field. Bring the field to you.

Finally, to badly quote a song, get by with a little help from your friends. That man who stood up at ASPA all those years ago spent two hours on the phone with me when I was having a breakdown about this job. Two. Hours. Remember the tip about kindness? It’s true. Another senior scholar encouraged me to keep pressing about place branding and marketing, and his advice helped me see that my topic mattered. One of my best memories was sitting at dinner one night at ASPA with Jessica Sowa, Rosemary O’Leary, Norma Riccucci, and Fran Berry. I thought, “Oh good grief, how did I get to this table?!” I sat up a bit straighter because I was so nervous. Then I realized, these women are top scholars but they are also really cool people. I relaxed a bit, and I am proud to call them all mentors today. I tell Mary Guy whenever I meet here that I want to be like her when I grow up.

It might sound like bragging, but the stories I share are a culmination of taking my own advice. Kindness and hard work got me those friends. Staying true to myself lets me stay around. I am getting better at asking for help when I need it. The neat part about more women editors is that we are building a great support network for each other. It is a tough role, but my hope is that at ASPA 2019, that “ask the editors” panel will be all women.

Fostering a Sense of Belonging: Incorporating Women into Your Public Administration Curriculum

Response to: Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity

Fostering a Sense of Belonging: Incorporating Women Into Your Public Administration Curriculum

Megan E. Hatch

Cleveland State University

Summer for me is a time of deep reflection. Thinking about finishing lingering projects, starting new research projects, my courses. This year, the last one is particularly salient. I am spending this summer focusing on revising the curriculum of two of the most important courses in our MPA program: the introductory course and the capstone. The necessity of getting this right cannot be overstated. For most students, the MPA is a terminal degree, so this is the opportunity to introduce them to the history, norms, and expectations of public administration. Certainly they will learn more as they continue their careers, but if they are not satisfied with their introduction to the field they may not continue in public service.

One thing I keep returning to is the importance of showing my students there is a place for them within public administration. Regardless of their gender identity, race, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability, or anything else, they can make a difference in their community. Many students already have public service motivation, so I see my role as cultivating a sense of belonging. To me, belonging comes from understanding the diversity of public administration. That is a topic I cannot possibly do justice to here, so instead, I will focus on the topic of my recent article in the Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE)―gender. Some of my favorite articles to get you started on other topics are by Vanessa Lopez-Littleton and Brandi Blessett, Domonic A. Bearfield, and a 2011 JPAE symposium.

In my JPAE article, I make the argument that the 3 Cs (content, context, and concepts) need to be aligned. By this, I mean the concepts we teach in the classroom, which are reflected in the content of readings, activities, and lectures, should match the context of the on-the-ground experiences of public administrators. Yet, this is not the case today. If you were to look at a typical MPA syllabus, you would think the field is dominated by men. I found on average, less than 20 percent of authors assigned in top-ranked MPA programs’ introductory courses were female and never was that over 42 percent. With an average of 59 percent of students enrolled in NASPAA-accredited programs identifying as female, it is clear women are an integral part of public administration.

One way to make women feel included in public administration is to include more women in our syllabi. When I say that, the common response is “But the founders of public administration were men.” It is true, Wilson, Gulick, Simon, Waldo, Wildavsky, and a host of others were (white) men. But that does not mean women were not part of public administration from the beginning. Camilla Stivers’ groundbreaking book should not be forgotten: as the field took a turn towards a scientific approach, women’s methods and contributions were devalued. This, coupled with the observation that women originally published less than men in public administration journals, lends credence to the idea that the field is dominated by men. However, since the late 1990s, this gender bias has been changing and even eliminated by controlling for mitigating factors . In fact, women are now more likely to publish in top-tier journals. While the contention that the founders of the field were all men remains prevalent, it is neither an accurate representation of the field today nor of public service historically. Those of us with Ph.D.’s in Public Administration probably had a comprehensive exam reading list dominated by men. Often instructors teach what they were taught, perpetuating this dominance of male authors. If like me, summer is a time of reflection for you, I implore you to stop this cycle and revise your curriculum to reflect the contributions of women.

How can you do this, given the earlier observations that men originally published more in public administration journals, and the “classics” are written by men? I have a variety of recommendations in my article, and others have suggestions as well, but I want to focus here on incorporating research by women into your curriculum.

There is undoubtedly value in learning our field’s history. In fact, I believe it is essential for students to understand the various iterations and themes, from the politics/administration dichotomy to Scientific Management to New Public Administration and New Public Service. Yes, many of the original articles and books on these topics were written by men. But those were not the final words written on the topics. An easy way to incorporate more women in your syllabus is to pair a male-authored “classic” with something a woman wrote. Some of my favorites include complementing Woodrow Wilson with the Perspectives on Politics symposium on his legacy, Martha Derthick with the Federalist Papers,  Norma Riccucci with Michael Lipsky and street level bureaucrats, and Deborah Stone with Herbert Simon and bounded rationality. When teaching budgeting, leadership, nonprofits, bureaucracy, or performance management, there are plenty of established and early career female scholars whose work will only enhance student understanding of these topics. There is nothing in the Laws of Teaching Public Administration ™ that say readings must be at least 50 years old. If anything, newer articles and books help students understand what they can expect as they enter the field.

This devaluing of women scholars is not unique to public administration. Jeff Colgan has an excellent article on this process in internal relations. The group Women Also Know Stuff was founded after a media article cited several influential political scientists, all of whom were male. The Women Also Know Stuff movement includes a website with a database of women scholars by specialty, Twitter account, and an explanatory journal article. That database has a listing of 76 women public administration scholars, by the way. They inspired other organizations, including Academic Women in Public Administration (AWPA), a group in which I am a board member. Search our database and you will see a list of almost 400 women scholars in the field. Our Twitter account frequently highlights new articles and books by women. We host meet-ups and panels at conferences. All those resources are places to look to see the myriad of ways women are contributing to the field.

After you have made these changes, use the Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT) developed by Jane Lawrence Sumner to test the gender balance of your syllabi. Feeling ambitious? I hope you are. Do not stop there. What I have offered you is a mostly technical solution to an adaptive problem. We also need systematic change to the structures and philosophy of the field. That is hard work, but is the only way to incorporate marginalized groups fully into public administration. I recommend starting by thinking about who is left out of your curriculum, why, and how you can incorporate those other voices. I am not claiming this is easy; in fact, I can personally attest to how difficult it is. I am going to be spending a lot of time this summer working on those two courses, and they will not be perfect. Incorporating diversity into our curriculum is a never-ending process. But it is an essential one if you want, as I do, to foster a true sense of belonging among our public administration students.

Response to: Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity

Response to: Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity

Mary Feeney & Helen Dickinson

Arizona State University

Power in Editorial Positions: A Feminist Critique of Public Administration

Academic journals play a crucial role in both the creation of knowledge and the career advancement of scholars (‘publish or perish’ as the mantra goes). As a result, journal editors serve a pivotal and critical role in the world of academia. In effect, they serve as gatekeepers, with the power to decide what gets published and what doesn’t.

In the realm of Public Administration, although the representation of women has increased over the years (which is to be commended), this doesn’t appear to be reflected on editorial boards.

Concerned about this and wanting to document the current state of play, colleagues Associate Professor Mary Feeney at ASU, Associate Professor Helen Dickinson and I from UNSW collected information about the top 24 Public Administration journals.

When we analysed the data, we found that only six had women in lead editor roles, that a quarter didn’t have any women in leadership roles, and that six journals only had one woman in an editorial leadership position. When it comes to review boards (those that do the bulk of reviewing) women made up less than 30%. In contrast, we found an over-representation of women in lower status positions such as book review roles.

Reflecting on this, we argue that this type of inequity is structural and thus changeable. We suggest a range of personal, interpersonal and structural strategies to improve the representation of women on editorial boards. These include (but not limited to) things such as encouraging under-represented candidates, ensuring departmental support and developing transparent journal processes.

As a field that advocates for transparency in government practice, we argue that it’s time we collectively raise our expectations for transparency in our scholarship.

Whilst Public administration has come a long way towards achieving gender diversity in our classrooms and increasingly in our faculty ranks, it’s yet to reach our journal leadership, and we argue it needs to. Now with a baseline documented, only time will tell how the field reacts and if greater diversity will be achieved into the future.

For more details, you can read the full paper here in Public Administration Review.

By Lisa Carson, on behalf of Mary Feeney & Helen Dickinson

Response to: Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity

Response to: Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity

Patricia M. Shields, PhD

Texas State University

When I entered the field of public administration, gender equity was framed by simpler concerns. It focused on the underrepresentation of women in MPA programs and among MPA faculty. There was perhaps a tacit assumption that as women’s presence grew, their impact on the theory, scholarship and practice of PA would grow accordingly. Maria D’Agostino and Nicole Elias’s blog post examine a world where this has yet to happen. They place some of the responsibility for this on women’s lack of representation on editorial boards and in the position of editor-in-chief.

I concur. Decisions about what and who to grace the pages of PA and Policy journals influence the content and leadership of our field. The Feeney et al. (2018) PARarticle “Power in Editorial Positions” made this clear. This article called for more transparency and voiced concern about bias. All of their arguments made sense. While we do not want editors or editorial boards to be bias, they are selected for their expertise and judgment. This judgment guides their decisions about the nature and future of the field. When women are missing from these positions, their guiding judgments are missing. I believe the field would be stronger if these guiding judgments reflected greater diversity. Voices, which now feel marginalized, can be better synthesized.

A commitment to increase the presence of women on editorial board and in the decision-making role of editor, is about the future of PA. I believe we should also turn our attention backward and re-imagine our past. A history of PA absent women is a contemporary problem. We need to find and re-integrate women into our historical narrative. Women’s contributions may not fit the neat categories that provide us with the stories of our founding fathers. We will need to look in unorthodox places and make the connections. The women are there, they were just marginalized and often pushed over into social work. Non-profit administration offers another avenue of investigation.

Even without the authority of the vote, women organized to recreate their communities. Theda Skocpol’s (1995) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policyand Cam Stivers (2000) Bureau Men and Settlement Womenare examples of work that should be part of mainstream PA history. I feel certain that if we look into social work, particularly the branches that focus on policy and advocacy, we will find many amazing pioneers of public administration. We need a historical pluralism and revisiting and reintegrating the work of women at the time of the founding is one way to do this.

Nicole and Maria asked me to contribute to the discussion because I have edited a journal for almost 18 years. Armed Forces & Societyis on the SSCI for both political science and sociology. It is international and interdisciplinary and looks broadly at social science and policy issues, which emerge as military and society intersect. Subjects we entertain include veterans, military families, gender integration, base closures, privatization, democratic control and mental health. About 15 percent of our submissions come from faculty in public administration or policy schools.

I published my dissertation, which examined the equity of the draft during the Vietnam era in Armed Forces & Society. The organization that owns the journal, Inter-university Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, was begun by military sociologists. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s leaders in this organization offered me many opportunities to expand my scholarly horizons, particularly in the areas of military recruitment, women and family issues. During that time, I attended conferences, participated in invited policy forums, contributed three journal articles, wrote nine book reviews and reviewed about three manuscripts a year. All of these activities contributed to the invitation in 2000 to become the editor-in-chief of Armed Forces & Society.  

In that role, I have been able to exercise that editorial judgment and influence the scholarship of civil-military relations. One surprising way I did this was to assign more European reviewers to manuscripts about the US military. I believed these papers often needed a more international perspective. Only later did I learn that European scholars were pleasantly surprised that they would be asked to comment on papers about the US military. They also began recommending Armed Forces & Societyas a publication outlet to more of their colleagues. The US authors responded positively as their assumptions were challenged and horizons widened.  The tone and scope of these articles improved in unexpected ways. I use this as an example of how seemingly small editorial decisions (who receives reviews) can influence scholarship. I also believe that my perspective as a woman contributed to that editorial decision.

I have several suggestions for how to increase the visibility of and impact of women’s ideas and scholarship in PA. First, don’t be shy. Promote your ideas and scholarship. Present at conferences, use social media platforms like Academia.edu and Research Gate. Cite yourself. Second, find a network of likeminded scholars and publish with them. Cite each other. Third, review for journals. Believe it or not, strong reviews set you up as a possible editor. In these reviews, when appropriate, suggest additional works by women be integrated into the literature. If your work fits, include it too. Fourth, have an active research agenda with manuscripts in various stages of completion. Learn from reviews. Figure out how the comments can contribute and make the changes. I had one particularly nasty and mean-spirited review. After a period of shock, I thanked my stars that I was not married to that jerk and revised taking into account the useful stuff. The line on my vita is sweet revenge.