A Female Policy Premium? Agency Context and Women's Leadership in the US Federal Bureaucracy

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Potter, Rachel Augustine; Volden, Craig
• 署名单位: University of Virginia
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH AND THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1053-1858
• DOI: 10.1093/jopart/muaa028
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 91-107
• 关键词: gender-differences; political appointees; top; difference; executives; style; sex

摘要

Although there are descriptive and substantive benefits associated with women serving in leadership posts in the bureaucracy, we ask whether there is a policy benefit associated with women's leadership. Simply put, is there a policy premium to having women as bureaucratic leaders? We focus on agency rulemaking, a policymaking activity conducted by nearly all federal agencies. Across three presidential administrations, we find no evidence of an across-the-board premium associated with women's leadership. However, our results are consistent with a conditional policy premium-wherein women leaders are particularly effective in advancing ambitious rules and in shepherding rules through to finalization-in agencies that have a working environment that is supportive of women and, to some extent, in agencies that focus on women's issues. One key implication is that, rather than working to tear down glass walls;' reformers would be better served by improving the workplace climate for women within agencies.