Some Ceilings Have More Cracks

TLDR

Representative bureaucracy has been a central focus in public administration, as bureaucrats’ characteristics shape policy design, scope, and implementation. The study aims to examine the distribution of women in leadership across 118 U.S. federal regulatory agencies by integrating management literature on gender and representative bureaucracy. The authors compiled a dataset of 118 U.S.

Abstract

In recent decades, representative bureaucracy has been a core area of interest, both in theory and in practice, in public administration. The focus on representative bureaucracy is important because the characteristics of bureaucrats influence the nature, scope, and implementation of public policies. Integrating management literature on men and women in leadership with existing work on representative bureaucracy, this study constructed a new data set examining the distribution of women in leadership in 118 U.S. federal regulatory organizations. We find that women remain underrepresented in federal regulatory agency leadership but not in the same magnitude as in political representation and private organization leadership. Specifically, women are expected to get into leadership positions in organizations working in “feminine” policy areas and where a woman holds the top level of leadership. In addition, the proportion of women in upper-level leadership positions is expected to increase in agencies with a higher likelihood of failure when such agencies are less visible.