In February 2017, when my second daughter was three weeks old, I pulled myself out of bed, downed several cups of coffee, showered, stuffed my postpartum body into something approximating professional attire, and went to present at my field’s big professional conference (College Art Association (CAA)). Thankfully, I had my mother at home, and, equally thankfully, my daughter had (mostly) taken to bottle-feeding the day prior, so I could rest assured that, at the very least, she would be cared for and fed for the 8 hours I would be away. However, I was nursing a newborn every two-three hours, and needed to pump to keep up my supply up. That year, CAA offered a fantastic service to nursing mothers—a lactation room.
The conference was held in a hotel, and nursing mothers were granted special key access to a large room on the lower level. The room contained two comfy chairs divided by a curtained partition, as well as a mini-fridge to store milk, ice water, and cups. Without having to huddle awkwardly in a bathroom stall while noisily pumping (which I did for other professional events during her first year) or having to sit in public with a nursing cover while I pumped (another fun experience), CAA’s available and well-thought-out lactation room ensured that I was comfortable, that my daughter could be fed, and that I was still able to advance my career and give the presentation.
Since then, CAA has added babysitting services (though, due to low enrollment in 2020, they are providing $250 childcare grants instead) to ensure that attending or presenting child caregivers are able to further their professional ambitions without having to worry about childcare demands.
However, this being said, there is always room for improvement. While I remain grateful for access to the lactation room during CAA 2017, the standard time between conference panels was too short to ensure that I could pump without missing a session or arriving to a panel quite late. During the short panel breaks, I would have to run down to the hotel lower level, get out my equipment, pump, store the milk, clean the materials, and then run back upstairs to make the start of an important session. Increasing the time between sessions might necessitate eliminating at least one potential panel from any conference’s (admittedly, overstuffed) roster, but perhaps it would be a small price to pay to further ensure that the need to pump or nurse wouldn’t impede a parent’s chance at professional advancement or networking.
Alternatively, “nursing pods” might be a solution. If every conference floor had at least two nursing pods, and if each conference room or floor was equipped with a mini-fridge for storage, then nursing mothers could quickly pump adjacent to their conference room, and then store their milk and equipment in the next panel’s space.
As a working mother of two children, I feel that this dialogue about improving conference support for caregivers is a wonderful first step and I believe that organizations have made tremendous strides to ensure that caregiving is not a professional penalty. I look forward to seeing how such support and advocacy continues in the future!
Elizabeth Berkowitz is an art historian specializing in modern art historiography and pre-World War II European avant-garde painting. She received her PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY; and also holds an MA in Modern Art from Columbia University and a Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from Tufts University. Currently, she works as the Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow and Outreach Program Manager at the Rockefeller Archive Center. In addition to a background as a museum and university educator, Elizabeth’s writings on modern art history and museum display have appeared in both popular and academic publications.
by Shilpa Viswanath, PhD and Jamie Levine Daniel, PhD :
Academic conferences, an essential component of academic life, contribute a whole new element to the parenting and caregiving challenge. Academic conferences are a hotbed for professional networking, career collaborations and for advancing one’s research. Attending conferences are especially indispensable for graduate and doctoral students as well as junior faculty members, given the opportunities to further their academic careers. Yet, conferences are notoriously long-drawn, involve travel and are expensive to attend. For parents and caregivers in academia, the barriers to conferencing are further complicated with sparse or absent childcare support. This blog symposium series on ‘Equitable Conferencing’ conceptualizes conferences as an extension of the workplace, and brings together students parents/caregivers, faculty parents/caregivers and practitioner parents/caregivers in the field of public administration to share personal narratives of struggles and strains involved while attempting to conference and also be a parent or caregiver.
Our symposium contributors, ASPA leadership, doctoral students, and faculty, approach issues of conference logistics, costs, (lack of) facilities and other barriers to conference participation (including childcare and dependent care responsibilities). Contributors also discuss frameworks to achieve an equitable conference environment, and means of financing conference childcare and dependent care support. This symposium also sheds light on new initiatives implemented by certain professional organizations in the field such as Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and Law & Society Association, both, who offer conference childcare grants (between $250-$500) in the form of monetary compensation to participants with children. These grants help cover extra expenses incurred for caregiving services. Other organizations such as the American Political Science Association (APSA) provide on-site conference childcare support at subsidized rates for children between 6months to 12 years of age.
To begin this series, Dr. Elizabeth Berkowitz highlights the needs of nursing mothers who attend conferences. In her blog post, she explores the idea of nursing pods at academic conferences which create a secure space for nursing mothers to pump and store milk, while participating in a conference. This is intended to be a productive dialogue, we welcome further online discussion and practical suggestions to address equitable conferencing. To contribute to this symposium, kindly send a 500 word blog post to wps@jjay.cuny.edu. If you have any questions, please contact one of the blog series editors: Shilpa Viswanath, sviswanath@uwlax.edu and Jamie Levine Daniel, jlevined@iupui.edu
Dr. Shilpa Viswanath is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. And, faculty affiliate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s Center for South Asia. Her research and teaching engage in themes of gender and social equity; labor unions and local governments, and, are rooted in her identities of being an immigrant in the United States, a faculty woman of color and a mother. She presently serves on the executive board of American Society for Public Administration’s Section for Women in Public Administration and, on the board of the Section for International and Comparative Administration.
Dr. Jamie Levine Daniel is an assistant professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. Her research focuses on the relationship between nonprofit resource acquisition and program service delivery, with particular experience interest on the relationship between earned revenue and mission.
by Shilpa Viswanath, PhD and Jamie Levine Daniel, PhD:
Academic conferences, an essential component of academic life, contribute a whole new element to the parenting and caregiving challenge. Academic conferences are a hotbed for professional networking, career collaborations and for advancing one’s research. Attending conferences are especially indispensable for graduate and doctoral students as well as junior faculty members, given the opportunities to further their academic careers.
Yet, conferences are notoriously long-drawn, involve travel and are expensive to attend. For parents and caregivers in academia, the barriers to conferencing are further complicated with sparse or absent childcare support. This blog symposium series on ‘Equitable Conferencing’ conceptualizes conferences as an extension of the workplace, and brings together students parents/caregivers, faculty parents/caregivers and practitioner parents/caregivers in the field of public administration to share personal narratives of struggles and strains involved while attempting to conference and also be a parent or caregiver.
Our symposium contributors, ASPA leadership, doctoral students, and faculty, approach issues of conference logistics, costs, (lack of) facilities and other barriers to conference participation (including childcare and dependent care responsibilities). Contributors also discuss frameworks to achieve an equitable conference environment, and means of financing conference childcare and dependent care support. This symposium also sheds light on new initiatives implemented by certain professional organizations in the field such as Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and Law & Society Association, both, who offer conference childcare grants (between $250-$500) in the form of monetary compensation to participants with children. These grants help cover extra expenses incurred for caregiving services. Other organizations such as the American Political Science Association (APSA) provide on-site conference childcare support at subsidized rates for children between 6months to 12 years of age.
To begin this series, Dr. Elizabeth Berkowitz highlights the needs of nursing mothers who attend conferences. In her blog post, she explores the idea of nursing pods at academic conferences which create a secure space for nursing mothers to pump and store milk, while participating in a conference. This is intended to be a productive dialogue, we welcome further online discussion and practical suggestions to address equitable conferencing. To contribute to this symposium, kindly send a 500 word blog post to wps@jjay.cuny.edu. If you have any questions, please contact one of the blog series editors: Shilpa Viswanath, sviswanath@uwlax.edu and Jamie Levine Daniel, jlevined@iupui.edu
Dr. Shilpa Viswanath is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. And, faculty affiliate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s Center for South Asia. Her research and teaching engage in themes of gender and social equity; labor unions and local governments, and, are rooted in her identities of being an immigrant in the United States, a faculty woman of color and a mother. She presently serves on the executive board of American Society for Public Administration’s Section for Women in Public Administration and, on the board of the Section for International and Comparative Administration.
Dr. Jamie Levine Daniel is an assistant professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. Her research focuses on the relationship between nonprofit resource acquisition and program service delivery, with particular experience interest on the relationship between earned revenue and mission.
Five students from a faculty-mentored research course, PAD 385: Sex and Gender in the Public Sector, at John Jay College conducted original qualitative research and presented their work at the 2019 Northeastern Conference on Public Administration (NECoPA). Nina Durand, Denissa Estevez De Leon, Karina Gopeesingh, Nicholas Hutchinson, and Mariana Silfa explored topics ranging from breastfeeding policy in the workplace to gender stereotypes in the media and education to LGBTQ community-police relations. The NECoPA Conference took place in Brooklyn, New York from Friday, November 8, 2019 – Sunday, November 10, 2019. This academic conference provided opportunities to engage with innovative research, participate in poster sessions and workshops, and network with colleagues. Below are the five students’ research blogs summarizing their work.
Title: Breastfeeding Matters: Promoting equity and inclusion of breastfeeding accommodations in federal and local governments
Author: Nina Durand
Introduction
According to the 2016 Breastfeeding Report Card by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 81% of birthing parents begin breastfeeding their babies at birth – but many stop earlier than is recommended (NYC Commission on Human Rights, 2019). Mothers are stopping breastfeeding not by choice, but largely because of the lack of accommodations they receive when returning back to work. In order to fix challenges and alleviate pressures returning mothers feel when going back to work, both federal and local governments have implemented legislation and policies to work towards achieving equity and inclusion for all breastfeeding mothers. My research analyzes both federal and local government policies for breastfeeding, conducting a comparative analysis of the policies in both levels of government. From this analysis, I found some policies to be productive in promoting equity and that others provide loopholes for employers not to promote inclusivity. After identifying policies that are helpful and unhelpful, I present my own recommendations, eliminating and revising policies to ensure all workplaces are promoting necessary equity and inclusion. From this research, I find policies need alteration and that they fail to hold all employers to the same standards.
How Scholars Study Breastfeeding Accommodations in Workplaces
Scholars argue that policies in place from both federal and local governments are not enough to raise equity and inclusion (Anderson, J., Kuehl, R., Drury, S., Tschetter, L., Schwaegerl, M., Hildreth, M., . . . Lamp, J. (2015). Policies in conjunction with interpersonal communication are needed to create supportive and inclusive breastfeeding environments. Scholars also argue that perceptions and attitudes contribute to negative connotations of breastfeeding in the workplace. As seen with a population based, public opinion telephone survey, NYC residents overwhelmingly had unfavorable views of breastfeeding. Several scholars also synthesiezed that factors such as race, age, sex and power dynamics hinder the spread of inclusivity in the workplace (Anderson, J., Kuehl, R., Drury, S., Tschetter, L., Schwaegerl, M., Hildreth, M., . . . Lamp, J. (2015). Pre-existing bias does exist, and are very present in workplaces. Collectively, scholars all argue for communication between employers and employees to raise awareness and inclusion for breastfeeding accommodations in the workplace. Policies do not fully address all factors that hinder breastfeeding inclusivity in the workplace. The regulations and policies in place for breastfeeding accommodations at work are just preliminary steps to promote equity and inclusion of breastfeeding employees. More can, and needs to be done to raise inclusivity and awareness.
My Approach to Studying Breastfeeding Accommodations in Workplaces
The goal of this research is to produce a qualitative analysis of breast-feeding accommodations in city and federal agencies, with the ultimate aim of improving the practice of policy for all levels of government. I analyzed federal and local legislation, guidelines, and policies about breastfeeding accommodations in the workplace, including fact sheets, local and federal laws, calls to action and publications.These documents provide insight into some of the most recent approaches to improving breastfeeding policies and accommodations in the workplace to date. To better understand the policies that should be implemented in all levels of government, I created a coding scheme based on current literature. The major themes coded in this analysis include: federal accommodations, local accommodations, what policies should be implemented in all levels of government, and what is missing from the policies that are already put into place. After an initial reading of the academic journals was performed, I paid careful attention to the larger purpose and to implications for practice on both the individual and organization. Text from these documents were placed in the categorical coding scheme using Microsoft Excel. After all content was coded, I identified major findings and implications for improving both federal and local government policies for breast-feeding employees.
Findings, Recommendations, and Remaining Questions:
From this analysis, it is evident that policies put in place in both local and federal governments have several loopholes. Under federal law, Section 7(r) of the Fair Labor Standards Act – Break Time for Nursing Mothers Provision, it states“An employer that employs less than 50 employees shall not be subject to the requirements of this subsection, if such requirements would impose an undue hardship by causing the employer significant difficulty or expense when considered in relation to the size, financial resources, nature, or structure of the employer’s business.” This language is problematic because it does not define what exactly is “significant difficulty” and “business difficulty” is which provides a loophole for employers to limit accommodations. Moreover, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services provides a plethora of information on creative space solutions for the creation of breastfeeding spaces in workplace environments of any size, how to ensure there is adequate staff coverage while mothers take pumping breaks, how to modify spaces and make them private for pumping, and how to use resources already available in workspaces to create comfortable pumping spaces. Factors such as “financial resources” and “expenses” should not be a determining factor for employers meeting the requirements of subsection 7 (R) of the FLSA because creating inclusivity has minimal cost and require limited effort from employers.
Under local NYC Human Rights Law Section 8-107(22)(b)(i), lactation room policies must be given to all new employees, informing them that breastfeeding is an option and normative practice in the workplace. The law requires that “employers disseminate or conspicuously post a written notice developed by the Commission on the rights of pregnant workers to be free from discrimination in relation to pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions. Employers can meet the obligations by posting the notice previously developed and disseminated by the Commission in 2015, or by posting their updated pregnancy notice.” Although spreading information about lactation policies in the workplace are important and great first steps, policies should be given to all employees, not just new employees. All employees must have a certain level of interpersonal communication for the normalization of pumping in the workplace to work. This analysis is the first step in addressing breast-feeding accommodations within the city and federal agencies however, more policies and/or revisions to current are needed. Future analyses should include multiple and differing agency types and levels of government. Moreover, future policies must eliminate loopholes for employers who do not need to implement breastfeeding inclusivity.
To improve, policies should mandate comprehensive, high-quality lactation support programs for employees. In order to do so, the International Board Certified Lactation Consultants (IBCLCs) should be mandated to be hired by employers to assist in developing their comprehensive, high-quality lactation support programs for their employees. Policies should also require one of the following outside entities come in to assist the development of these support programs for employees. The list of organizations include: American Academy of Pediatrics, LAMAZE International, International Lactation Consultant Association (ICLA), La Leche League International (LLLI), National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health, National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB) and/or National Women’s Health Information Center, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Additionally, law should mandate agencies to mirror successful worksite programs at specific agencies such as the National Security Agency, National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy Headquarters, and the The Congressional Program. These programs have high levels of success because they go beyond the minimal requirements of subsection (r) to section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and follow the best practices for breastfeeding mothers. Instead of the bare minimum requirements mandated in policies, policies should also take into account convenience and accessibility for mothers. In lactation rooms, employers should provide breast pumps for employees. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health, “it is cost-efficient to purchase or rent a multi-user, double electric breast pump. These pumps can be shared by multiple women, and they are valued because they help women express milk quickly and efficiently. Employers also benefit because women are able to minimize the amount of break time needed to express milk.” There are benefits to employers providing more than the bare minimum for employees.
To normalize and promote breastfeeding in workplaces, I recommend mandated training by the Equal Employment Opportunity office, Office of Labor Relations and/or Human Resources Department for all employees to learn about the benefits of breastfeeding, why it is important, and why it must be an option in the workplace. These training will normalize the conversation in the workplace and help promote dialogue. These training may also alleviate some of the factors listed that hinder mothers from breastfeeding in the workplace. Training should discuss the benefits of breastfeeding for both the mother and employers. Agency heads and upper level officials should recieve a separate training informing them of the economic benefits of breastfeeding inclusivity. These trainings should inform upper level officials that by promoting and implementing breastfeeding policy can result in greater workplace productivity, organizational loyalty, increased recruitment and retention, job satisfaction, and lower healthcare and insurance costs.
Lastly, I recommend policies from both local and federal governments need to explicitly state what “significant difficulty” and “business difficulty” is and give clear instructions and definitions for all employers to abide by. The end of these policies should clearly define these terms and state what is acceptable to deem as a “difficulty”. Lastly, Section 7r of Subsection R of the Section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act does not apply to employers with less than 50 employees. Employers of smaller establishments do not need to give break times if it will cause “significant difficulty” to the employer and/or business. Employers do not need to compensate workers for this breaktime. Special mandates need to be put in place for workplaces to ensure they are creating inclusivity for breastfeeding mothers and that this demographic of mother receive all the accommodations mothers in large settings would. From this analysis of loopholes in policies and my recommendations, it is evident that more work needs to be done. Moving forward both local and federal governments.
From this analysis, it is evident that breastfeeding accommodations in both in federal agencies and local governments are essential, and the recommendations for policy and practice outlined here should serve as a starting point for future improvements. This analysis is a first step in addressing breastfeeding equity and inclusion within workplaces, however, more research is needed. Future analyses should include more than one state, and multiple and differing agency types and levels of government. For example, there can be further research can be done comparing the local policies of California to New York and then comparing those policies to federal policy mandated in all 50 states. Additionally, research can be done comparing the top local breastfeeding program and the top local federal breastfeeding program, finding similarities and differences. As we further research the topic of inclusivity of breastfeeding in workplaces, future questions need to be answered. How can we include lactation room awareness into mandated agency policy? Who will deliver these mandatory trainings and how can we strictly enforce these trainings be taken by all employees? How can agency heads incentivize their employees and normalize breastfeeding in their workplaces? These topics will strengthen the public sector and research community by pushing practitioners and scholars to rethink some of our most basic assumptions surrounding breastfeeding accommodations in the workplace.
Nina Durand is a current student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, enrolled in the BS/MPA Public Policy and Administration program.With over three years of experience working for the New York City government, she completes many tasks relevant to the field of personnel management. Her interest in the field of public administration began in the summer of 2016 when she worked as a summer intern for New York City Council Member Donovan Richards. At this time, she had no prior knowledge of how public agencies worked or the field of public service. In the short duration of the Ladders for Leaders Internship program, she was immersed in the field of public administration and developed a passion for public service. She was also promoted from summer intern to councilmanic aide and assistant event planner, to later the campaign manager for 2017 Donovan’s re-election campaign. Currently, Nina works for Recruitment Assistant for the NYC Department of Buildings. She is a certified Mental Health First Aid, a certified mandated reporter by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, and is a member of the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society.
Title: Gender stereotypes influence academic performance!!!. Do you want to know how?
Author: Denissa Estevez De Leon
Introduction
Has gender affected your educational or career pursuits in any way? Research shows that gender stereotypes can influence the academic performance of children and adolescents (eilock, Gunderson, Ramirez, & Levine, 2010; Heyder, & Kessels, 2015; Steffens, Jelenec, & Noack, 2010). Advocacy organizations seek to minimize the influence of gender stereotyping on academic performance. Therefore, is important to understand how advocacy organizations are promoting gender equality in public areas such as public schools. This research answers the following questions: What are the effects of female-male gender stereotypes on academic performance of children/adolescents students in public schools? And How are education advocacy organizations addressing gender stereotyping in public schools? This project is only a first step in tackling the pervasive issue of gender stereotyping in education, more research in this topic is needed.
Scholars Study
For the purpose of this article, is essential to analyze scholarly articles on gender stereotypes in public schools, with a concentration in academic performances. Some research shows that students (children and adolescents) from an early age have implicit bias about math achievement, in other words, students implicitly believe that males are better at math than felemas (Steffens, Jelenec, & Noack, 2010). However, this belief could be an effect of the teacher’s point of view and experience (Beilock, Gunderson, Ramirez, & Levine, 2010; Heyder, & Kessels, 2015). Therefore, Beilock et al. (2010) say that females teachers’ math anxiety could influence the student’s (girls and boys) math achievement and performance. Heyder and Kessels (2015) say that student’s gender could trigger teacher’s gender stereotype, that teachers would be influenced by gender stereotypes when the student act his or her gender or if they show gender neutral behavior. On the other hand, geographic areas could also influence gender stereotypes and academic performance. Reardon, Fahle, Kalogrides, Podolsky, and Zárate, (2019) say that there is not significant differences in school districts relate to gender achievement gap in math, however there is a significant differences relate to ELA gap in favor of females. District where females have a higher math score than mael are also district where females have a higher ELA scores than male, and vice versa. However, math gap tend to favor males in schools district of socioeconomic advantaged and schools district with larger gender disparities in individual income, education, and occupation. Therefore, Pope, and Sydnor (2010) say that states with lower gender stereotype of male being good at math and science test, also have a lower gender stereotype for females in tests readings, which means location can influence the academic gender stereotypes gap between female and male. To sum up, implicit bias, teacher’s point of view, and location are factors that influence children and adolescent academic performance in public schools.
My Approach to Studying
The goal of this research is to produce a qualitative analysis of how masculinity and femininity (female/male) affects children/adolescent academic performance in public schools, with the ultimate aim of addressing this issue and narrow the gender gap relate to academic performances. For this purpose I analyzed six advocacy organizations: UN Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women); Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization); USAID (United States Agency for International Development); Unicef (United Nations Children’s Fund); NCWGE (National coalition for women and girls in education). These organizations provide insight into some of the most recent approaches to gender stereotype gaps to date. To better understand how gender stereotypes impact academic performances in public schools, I created a coding scheme based on current literature. The major themes coded in this analysis include: the purpose of the organization, female stereotypes and male stereotypes, why gender stereotype is a problem, magnitude of stereotype, and ways to deconstruct stereotypes. After an initial reading of the scholarly articles was performed, I paid careful attention to the larger purpose and to implications for practice on both the individual and organizational level of these scholarly articles relate to female-male gender stereotypes. After all content was coded, I identified major findings and implications for improving practice of gender stereotypes in public schools.
Findings, Recommendations, and Remaining Questions
Equality is the main goal of society, therefore, in this article, I analyzed five advocacy organizations that focus on educating the young (child/adolescents in some case young adults). For this purpose, I analyzed five advocacy organizations that are implementing ideas in favor of gender equality. I analyzed each organization and conclude that each of them should include; the purpose which they are advocating for, what is the problem, differences in gender stereotypes between females and males, the magnitude of gender stereotypes, and how they can deconstruct the stereotype. Below, I establish an analyzed of the five major categories of my coding scheme and conclude with future research questions and directions.
There are different ways in which the organizations are addressing female/male gender stereotypes. The purpose of these organizations are different but similar, in other words, they promote the female/male gender stereotype in different ways but they all have the same intentions. Some of them (UN Women, Unesco, and NCWGE) promote gender equality throughput women’s empowerment, however, USAID and Unicef are promoting equal education for children at a disadvantage. Also, organization defines gender stereotypes problems in different ways. Problem variate from boys/men do not understand their roles in promoting girls/women empowerment, girls in school do not have the same opportunity as boys to choose their education path, girls who do not have access to education are dropping out of school or are fighting to stay in school, gap between different groups of children, failing of the government on implementing issues regulating education. Therefore, this advocacy organizations also see female/male gender stereotype differently. This include barriers such as: work segregation, discrimination against girls/women, bias, social norms and expectations, unequeal treatment and sexual harasssment. Most of the advocacy organizations have a similar definition of the magnitude of gender stereotypes. UN Women and Unicef say that the magnitude of gender stereotype is the implementation of political, economic and regional decision-making, whether, USAID and NCWGE say that careers and future jobs are the magnitudes of gender stereotypes, where more years of education and access to technical occupations can help decrease the wage gap between females and males, Unesco says that STEM careers are the jobs of the future. Thus, there are many ways in which gender stereotype gaps could be addressed, most of the organizations believe that advocacy for the use of policy, institutional environment and legislation could favor of gender equality and equal treatment for girls and boys; also the implementation of better school programs for example engaging girls/women in participating and continue with careers in the STEM field, better reading programs, teacher training activities to improve an equitable treatment to girls and boys, vocational and technical skills, and more. Basically, with the implementation of better policies and a strong educational program for the students and the teacher, gender stereotypes could decrease dramatically, which conduct to gender equality.
Future Research related to gender stereotype and academic performances in needed. The main goal is to live in a society with gender equality for all residents. Through this analysis, we can see how important it is to teach younger generations about gender stereotype and it is consequences. This project is only a first step in better understanding and addressing these issues. More research on this topic is needed. Further analysis should include advocacy organizations relate to parenting style, how parenting style is affecting the way a child is experiencing gender stereotypes. Also, more research has to be done in terms of location, even though some organizations are multi-countries organization; advocacy organization should focus on the consequence of global stereotype and how less developed countries are different than more developed countries in terms of gender stereotypes.
Denissa Estevez De Leon is an undergraduate senior student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and will obtain her Bachelor of Arts in Forensic Psychology in Spring 2020. Denissa’s current goal is to attend medical school and pursue her dream of becoming a Psychiatrist, therefore she would be able to mentally help her community since there is a lot of stigma about mental illness in her community (Latino Community). She is interested in the mental health field; gender equality activities, and human rights movements. Thus, she is currently seeking internships and job opportunities that help her build the base and foundation for her future career. Her hobbies are reading, writing, painting, photography, traveling, and visit different places around New York City and other places she had visited around the world. She engages in those hobbies because it would give her the inside and outside knowledge that she needs to interact with the world and people of different backgrounds; which is essential to understand the mental condition of an individual.
Title: Not an Object: Sexualization of Women and Girls in the Media
Author: Karina Gopeesingh
Introduction:
Sexualization of women and girls in the media is essentially the process of women and girls being made sexual objects through the power of the media. Sexualization can take a toll on the mental health of women and girls, causing them to have negative emotions about themselves in addition to viewing themselves the way the media portrays them. Advocacy organizations have begun to treat sexualization as a flaw of society and created action plans to combat it. These organizations operate to change the way women and girls are depicted in the media. Research on this topic is limited; however, the existing scholarship primarily explores the relationship between media sexualization and mental health outcomes. To fill the gaps in scholarship, researching advocacy organization is important, as these organizations take the initiative to ignite that spark in others who are passionate about combating the sexualization of women and girls in the media.
How Scholars Study Sexualization in Women and Girls:
Scholars study sexualization of women and girls in the media by arguing that it leads to public health implications (Aubrey, J. S., Henson, J. R., Hopper, K. M., & Smith, S. E. , 2009; Clark, L., & Tiggemann, M., 2008; Davis, S. E., 2018; Gapinski, K. D., Brownell, K. D., & LaFrance, M., 2003; Grabe, S., & Hyde, J. S., 2009; Harper, B., & Tiggemann, M., 2007; Morry, M. M., & Staska, S. L., 2001). Through the lens of sexual objectification/sexualization in the media, women and girls are at risk of disruption in mental health. Women and girls are victims of sexual objectification and this often leads them to begin to objectify themselves in the same way. For example, caring more about their appearance and being dissatisfied with their own body (Clark, L., & Tiggemann, M., 2008;Harper, B., & Tiggemann, M., 2007; Morry, M. M., & Staska, S. L., 2001) . In the media, there is a common theme of what the “ideal” woman should look like, whether it be in magazines, television, music, etc. Women and girls internalize these “perfect” women and if they don’t match, they begin to see themselves in a negative way.
The implications of mental health include, but are not limited to, self-objectification, body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, anxiety, low confidence, and eating disorders (Aubrey, J. S., Henson, J. R., Hopper, K. M., & Smith, S. E. , 2009; Clark, L., & Tiggemann, M., 2008; Gapinski, K. D., Brownell, K. D., & LaFrance, M., 2003; Grabe, S., & Hyde, J. S., 2009; Harper, B., & Tiggemann, M., 2007; Morry, M. M., & Staska, S. L., 2001). Media greatly influences the onset of these mental health problems in women and girls and continues to contribute to women being self-conscious and unhappy with themselves. Using different experimental techniques and questionnaires, scholars are able to determine that media is in fact a large factor in both the sexualization of women and girls as well as the mental health issues that are consequences of it.
My Approach to Studying Advocacy Organizations
To better understand efforts to address the sexualization of women and girls, I analyzed the following advocacy organizations working to mitigate sexualization of women and girls: About Face, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, Girls Inc, Media Smarts, YWCA Metro Vancouver and SPARK. These organizations provide insight as to how sexualization of women and girls affect their health and how they are advocating against it as well as for women and girls. To analyze these efforts, I created a coding system that was based on how each advocacy organization defines the problem, what each organization has to offer in terms of raising awareness, strategies for change, and educational programs such as social media workshops, youth workshops and adult workshops for women, girls and parents. This analysis allowed me to make recommendations to address the sexualization of women and girls and improve public health implications.
Findings, Recommendations and Remaining Questions:
My primary findings support the idea that organizations need to have ways to implement change, raise awareness and provide ways to empower both youth and adults in the issue, media literacy and advocating against sexualization. Each organization developed some definition as to what sexualization in media is and how it affects women and girls. The definitions provided by the organizations are consistent with their actions for advocacy and prevention. For example, YWCA Metro Vancouver recognizes sexualization in the media as : “the narrow, often unattainable standards for female attractiveness…” and “female sexual objectification involves a woman being viewed primarily as an object of sexual desire, rather than as a whole person.” I found that all six organizations have someway of raising awareness to have their views and goals heard in an attempt to get more people to join their advocacy. Blog posts, social media posts, and published articles seemed to be the most common trend amongst these organizations. By varying their awareness methods, they are able to reach more people across a multitude of platforms which seems to be effective considering these organizations conduct them all over the country. Increasing advocacy, conducting research and calling for media literacy are the three main strategies for change that these organizations suggest. Increasing advocacy calls for more attention to the issues and gets more people to be involved in the cause. Research gives advocates a reason to keep fighting as it provides the evidence that sexualization of women and girls in the media are detrimental to the way they continue to develop. Media literacy is also important due to the way it provides youth with how to effectively and cautiously use social media, to ensure that women and girls are aware of media messages and how to filter out toxicity. Finally, social media, youth and adults are the factors that these organizations chose to focus on when creating education programs in order to create a stronger resistance against the media and ultimately against sexualization. Social Media About Face has Workshop and Social Media Workshop, serving as an introduction to the media and how to decode, resist and question the media and allow for learning how to thoughtfully use social media and the effects on teens. Media Smarts has Media Literacy Week: Break the Fake, to help stop the spread of false information online and provide additional tips on how to be smart about the media. Youth A trending theme between the organizations is having youth programs participate in advocacy work such as research, conferences and after school programs which help build their voice and aid in their development. Adult These organizations also include parents by teaching them similarly way to youth, making them versed in what is going on, and how they can be apart of the fight to help.
There are numerous directions that can be explored surrounding the sexualization of women and girls. For instance, there can be further research done on campaigns or what being a part of programs help supplement. Using interviews or being part of the movements, can help open up research opportunities and provide analytical answers for a better understanding. Future research should address the following critical questions: Why are organizations limited on their educational programs and advocacy actions? How can the media be restricted and influenced as to not contribute to sexualizing women and girls? What are the public’s views on the issue of sexualization and what recommendations do they have to combat it? How effective are these programs that are put in place by advocacy organizations? Ultimately, advocacy organizations have the potential to address the pervasiveness of sexualization in the media which will have positive impacts for both individuals and social structures. Through advocacy organizations and using their current and future efforts, they can theoretically influence the mitigation of sexualization of women and girls in the media.
Karina Gopeesingh is an undergraduate student in the major of Forensic Psychology with a minor in counseling. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Spring of 2021, Karina plans to attend graduate school to pursue a Masters of Arts in Forensic Mental Health Counseling. As she continues with her education, she is looking for internships and research opportunities in different fields that could give her insight and experience to different ways she can use her degree. Upon completing her education and obtaining her degree, Karina intends to become a licensed forensic mental health counselor and work with young children and adolescents.
Title: Relations between the New York City Police Department and LGBTQ Community
Author: Nicholas Hutchinson
Introduction
The riots at the Stone Wall Inn in New York City is known as one of the most influencial events in the gay rights history. Police officials having a long standing stance of not admitting police error in the altercation, which has always left stalwart between the department and those in the LGBTQ community that has persisted throughout the years. (Gold, Norman 2019) The purpose of my research is to examine this relationship through analysis of policy and procedure of the department. To find evidence in reports from other organizations who job it is to detail wrongdoing or procedural inefficiency. That further details the history, prevalence, and questions that have still left unanswered and recommendations on creating change.
How Scholars Study LGBTQ and Law Enforcement Relations
To examine the relations between the NYPD and LGBT community, should begin with that of its history, this is integral in creating policies that will be beneficial to all sides involved. The history has been quite tumultuous, police have always viewed the LGBTQ community as indecent, and this indecency has played a role in their treatment of the community. In recent history there has been a change however, where police departments across the county have now used the media to help promote an LGBTQ friendly image. (A, 2014) This opinion has widely been held by that of government as well, for a long period in American History that has created a criminalization of the community as a whole. This negative views by government has created laws that have armed police forces nationwide and have led to injustices physical and nonphysical in nature. Their needs to be an elimination of these injustices that can only be accomplished in widespread change in policy, making these actions illegal. (Shree, 2018).
Let’s examine recent injustices the LGBTQ community have received by the hands of law enforcement, data proports that “harassment and discrimination is greatest for LBTQ people of color, transgender persons and youths. LGBTQ survivors who reported crimes to police 48% percent complained they experience mistreatment. Which included unjustified arrest, use of excessive force, and entrapment. (Mallory, 2015). This treatment has directly affected the perception of those in LGBTQ community. Perception of police by minority groups have always been negative. However, a survey done by (Owen, 2018) asks non LGBTQ and LGBT there perception of the police, and the results showed the LGBTQ participants had a significantly negative view of the police, and those who were of color was even lower. The survey purpose was to find out what would help with interaction between the LGBTQ community and Law enforcement and the answer was a softening in the approach of law enforcement.
Another question needs to be asked is how police officers who are members of the LGBTQ community treated or perceived? This is important because if those members of the rank and file are being treated unfairly. There is no way that the laws enforcement can improve the way it treats LGBTQ outside the force. Police officers who identify themselves as female and lesbian are automatically seen as masculine while those who identify themselves as male and homosexual are hypersexualized and seen as feminine. Most were told they could not wear uniforms while attending LGBTQ conferences, and thought that although there were
Research Sketch
The goal of this research is to produce a qualitative analysis that will examine the relationship between the New York City Police Department and the LGBTQ Community. I have analyzed the following documents :NYC’s DOI report on the issue(2017), The NYC Police Department’s response(2018), Department of Civilian Complaint Review Board LGBTQ complaints Report from 2010 – 2015, Report on Stop and Frisk done by the Center for Constitutional Rights (2012), and NYPD’s LGBTQ Outreach Unit information pamphlet. These documents have highlighted the current and past approach of the New York City Police Department in dealing with the LGBTQ community. I have created a coding scheme based on these sources, to highlight the major themes I have found. These themes will help aide in not only recognizing current procedure, but also point to procedural and policy actions that are needed in the improvement in relations between both communities. Text from these documents were placed in the categorical coding scheme using Microsoft Excel.
Findings, Recommendations, and Remaining Questions
Findings:
Four major categories have guided this analysis; Motivation, Problem Recognition, Ongoing efforts, and Agency or Organization Recommendation. Motivation is the reason or reasons the agency has created the data source. The CCRB motivation is to report apparent patterns of misconduct, relevant issues and policy matters to the Police Commissioner and the public.Problem Definition or Recognition of the problem; identifies the issues the organizations or agencies have found between the NYPD had the LGBTQ community. Center for Constitutional Rights found that police officers unfairly targeted the LGBTQ for their gender expression and non-gender conforming. Transgender women were profiled by the NYPD for offenses such as loitering for the purposes of prostitution and other sexaul offenses as well as other crimes. The descrimination does not stop there trangender women when arrested are often placed in cells with cis gnder men. Ongoing efforts points to Procedure and Policy currently in effect to bring about change in Relations. It is the NYC DOI mission to give access to city documents and workers and information, the power to subpoena documents, and take testimony under oath Rooting out all corruption in city government. . Agency or Organization recommendation is central to analysis it gives a full picture of the policy problem, the recommendations is the final step in the analysis. Giving further direction to not only understanding the problems but gives a method on how to fix it. Making sure body cams have audio helps when complaints are filed to have an independent to verify all sides of the story. Expert audits of complaints, in service train via webinar so all officers can receive it, and all handouts consistent throughout the entire department regarding LGBT issues.
Recommendations
Through further analysis of this study, several issues have been exposed. First, in efforts to address the need to assess acquired knowledge, pre and post test material specific to LGBTQ affirming interactions should be administered. By administering pre and post test, this allows for better evaluation of knowledge learned. Next, the patrol guidelines are only mandatory to those who are either in the academy or an officer who has just received a promotion. Meaning those who are not promoted or are new to the force do not receive the training. Instead they receive a 15 minute in service training that is only administered when the captain of the presint ask for it.. Furthermore, with the training being only 15 minutes, officers are not learning anything from this training. No one is tracking the effectiveness of the implementation and education of the training. An independent body collecting information to this regard is integral to the success of the patrol guidelines. In addition to this, a more comprehensive series of classes, with more detailed training on culture and vocabulary would serve the officers best.
Remaining Questions
While the analysis have gives some details and insight to some of the policies and procedures that has plagued the relations between the New York City Police Department and the LGBTQ community there is still much to be done. We have not talked about or discuss the culture inside of the NYPD, and how a change of perspective can have a positive effect on relations. Furthermore, could the size of the department be the reason why there are so many issues in the way in which it treats the LGBTQ community, and not understanding how important implementing and 2012 patrol guides is.. A comparison between it and departments small and large across the country and the world could give some insight on what it is doing wrong and how to fix it.
Nicholas Hutchinson who has already earned an associated from the Borough of Manhattan Community College where he graduated with distinction. Is a Senior at the John Jay College, who will earn his bachelor’s in public administration in Fall 2019. He then will be continuing his education at John Jay college where he Graduate, he will be working towards a master’s in public administration with a concentration in Public Policy and Public Management. In Grad school along with studying issues involving Public Policy and Public management, he hopes to join the research team where he will hone his kill in research. He currently works as a purchasing agent at Public Resources Advisory Group, Inc. for the last 15 years. Public Resources Advisory Group is the No.2 Financial Advisory firm in the country, with clients such as the City and State of New York. His responsibilities there is include but are not limited to maintaining several databases daily and making sure professional are equipped with the tools they need assisting our clients for their individual financial needs.
Title: Improving policies for providing adequate lactation accommodations at the workplace
Author: Mariana Silfa
Introduction (Description of topic, importance, how you study, implications)
This analysis explores the importance of creating breastfeeding facilities for lactating women at the workplace. It examines the policies put in place, the benefits of providing adequate space and time, and how to change supervising managers’ perception on allowing the time needed. Within this analysis will find that at all these organizations and local governments at the root want to be able to provide mothers a safe space at work where they can be able to pump without the worry of losing their job.
Scholars Approach: 2 paragraphs
Within my research I found that the policies and laws were put in place to protect mothers and babies, but most importantly improve public health. These policies and laws protect mothers from losing their jobs and giving them the right to take breaks to pump at work without stigma and the fear or losing their jobs.
The Lit Reviews focused more on how having a workplace that providing accommodations for pumping breast milk has proven overall health benefits and increased work morale. They show the benefits for both the mothers and employers, it has proven reduction in employee absenteeism, increased employee retention, increased employee loyalty and healthcare cost savings.
My Approach:
My Approach to studying the need to make accommodations for breastfeeding mothers at work is to produce a qualitative analysis of lactation accommodations in New York CIty agencies. I analyzed the following legislation and guiding documents: local laws 185 and 186 created by The NYC Commission of Human Rights and text from Fair Labor Standard Act created by the U.S. Department of Labor.
These documents provide employers with the legal requirements and best practices ensuring that employers are in accordance with the New York City Human Rights Law that provides lactation accommodations to employees.
To better understand how local agencies are addressing lactation issues in the workplace through formal workplace policy, I created a coding scheme based on current literature. The major themes coded in this analysis include:
– Required organizational support for lactation at work
– Employees’ perceptions of lactation support –
– Accomodations for pumping and physical facilities for pumping at work
After reading the local laws and academic articles, I paid careful attention to the larger purpose and the implications of these practices on both the individual and organizational level of these articles and policies. Text from these documents allowed me to identify areas in need of improvement and implications if employees are not supported in the workplace.
Findings, Recommendations, and Remaining Questions
Within my findings I learned that many breastfeeding mothers are not able to continue to breastfeed after returning to work due to not having the right support from managers, no workplace policies in place that require management to provide space and time for expressing milk and pressure of not being seen as a slacker at work. Although local government have created laws that protect lactating mothers not all employers are organizations dedicated to the breastfeeding movement have created language around supporting breastfeeding mothers at the workplace. The department of health and the CDC are always putting out information about the important’ of breastmilk and the nutrients it provides against common childhood illnesses and infections. Breast Milk is able to provide babies with the mother’s antibodies, protecting the baby from getting ill.
In the effort of creating safe spaces from breastfeeding mothers; they are now requiring companies to create infrastructures and time allowance in the hopes of supporting mothers to continue to breastfeed pass their maternity leave. The US Department of Health and Human Services research states that the incidence and severity of many infectious diseases is significantly decreased in breastfed infants compared to infants fed commercially made infant formula. While the National Center for Biotechnology Information research stated that many women that plan on going back to work full-time never attempt to breastfeed due to the lack of support and protection at the workplace.
A workplaces providing accommodations for have breastfeeding have had proven health benefits and increased work morale. The analysis shows the benefits for both mothers and employers, which attributes to reduction in employee absenteeism, increased employee retention, increased employee loyalty and healthcare cost savings.
Although there are policies in place, there are still significant gaps in knowledge and support surrounding breastfeeding in the workplace. There needs to be more research into how are breastfeeding groups that include non-cis gendered women, women who work on the road and in the service industry. the economic impact of breastfeeding on employers; the cost of having best practices for management that are in support of breastfeeding. In conclusion,
Bio: Mariana Silfa
Email: mariana.silfa@jjay.cuny.edy
Twitter @silfamariana
Mariana is currently a senior at John Jay college with a major in Public Administration. She has been working at City Harvest since 2008. In the past eleven years, she has done everything from providing customer service to more than 400 partner soup kitchens and food pantries, to running the organization’s food distribution allocation system. She currently leads City Harvest’s agency capacity assessment and building work as a Senior Manager on our Agency Operations team. As part of City Harvest’s bold strategic plan that sees City Harvest rescuing and delivering 75 million pounds of food annually by 2022, Mariana is leading the charge in understanding and increasing capacity at agencies so they can receive more rescued food. Marians is working on innovative and diverse strategies in order to distribute more food efficiently and build a more sustainable, equitable food system. Since taking on the role of Senior Manager, Network Capacity Compliance in Fiscal Year 2018, Mariana has led many client choice conversions, agency makeovers and neighborhood sponsorship opportunities.
Five students from John Jay College’s MPA program participated in the 2019 ASPA Conference. The ASPA Conference took place in Washington, DC from Friday, March 8, 2019 to Tuesday, March 12, 2019. This academic conference provided opportunities to present research, participate in panels and workshops, and engage with colleagues in networking events. Below are reflections from the conference written by Evana Alam, Xiomara Guerrero, Eunice Lee, Segun Olaniyi and Gwendolyn Saffran.
Evana Alam
This was my second annual ASPA Conference 2019, held at our nation’s capital, Washington DC. The event presented numerous conference tracks ranging from social equity, ethics, management, and problems in public administration. Scholars of public administration arrived from all over the country as well as other nations, who shared the same interests and vision of the field’s future.
I was pleased to attend this conference with my colleagues at John Jay College, some of whom are fellow MPA students and many distinguished faculty from the department. They shared their research, which composed of gender equity, corruption, and performance budgeting to name a few. Some of the research were complete while others were a work in progress. It was exciting to join in the research discussion held in various rooms and listen to presenters talk about their specialized research and network with professionals who were eager to learn about me and other prospective students.
One research that stood out to me in the conference was during the social equity track. There, one of the scholars discussed how rampant sexual harassment against female humanitarian workers exists, supported by a survey from Humanitarian Women’s Network. Moreover, this problem was amplified in nations where there is conflict and forced displacement. The scope of the problem was very high in the public sector and people were afraid to talk against it based on several factors. The research was an example of how important our work towards gender equity and public administration is. To provide recommendations and solutions to these problems, academics gain much by collaborating in public administration conferences such as ASPA. Next year, I plan on proposing my developing research on gender equity as an MPA student of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I encourage all public administration professionals and students to participate. It will not only jump start your career, but it will connect you with the right people in the field. See you in Anaheim, California for ASPA 2020!
About the author:
Evana Alam is a graduate student in the Masters of Public Administration Program (Public Policy and Administration), with a dual specialization in Human Resource Management and Management & Operations. She has a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) from East West University from Dhaka, Bangladesh and is certified by the International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA) as a Supply Chain Analyst. As a member of the American Society of Public Administration (ASPA), she participated and assisted Women in the Public Sector in the 2018 ASPA Annual Conference at Denver, Colorado. Currently, Evana also works as an administrative assistant in the Teaching and Learning Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her hobbies are photography, traveling, painting and learning about different cultures. After graduating, she plans to launch an organization that will empower the economic and social development of Bangladeshi women.
Xiomara Guerrero
I had the opportunity to attend the ASPA Annual Conference that took place in Washington, DC from Saturday, March 9th to Monday, March 11thwhere I met with professors and students from John Jay. The conference covered the challenges that are presented in every level of government, whether it’s the national, state, and local government as well as private and nonprofit organizations. Each day was filled with several panels and sessions to choose from that aimed on five impacted areas: global public administration, infrastructure, public finance, public service and social equity. A workshop that I enjoyed and found very informative was the SEDI workshop. The Social Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Workshop (SEDI) presented a discussion on equity, diversity, and inclusion. The workshop delivered strategys on self- awareness, inter-personal interactions and decision-making process that can lead to meaningful engagement with members within a workplace. By closely examining how issues that surround social class, language, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, and religion we are able to understand that these differences can be set as an advantage or disadvantage. Our identity plays a significant role in determining how we understand and experience the world as well as shaping the types of opportunities and challenges we face. In order to develop awareness, the workshop presented an identity wheel exercise, and a cookie person scenario both exercises allowing us to recognize our privilege as targeted and advantaged group. For the identity wheel participants had to indicate if they felt they were a targeted or advantage social group and splitting every social group they identify themselves with. Each table received a distinct “cookie person” with a scenario and how that “person” will feel in the indicated place setting including their ethnicity, gender etc. These exercises made not only myself but my peers have a different perspective on how not only we view ourselves, but how others view us. In conclusion, in order to be more effective in providing future administrators with the knowledge and skill sets necessary to be successful, we must continue to promote the concept of diversity and effectively link our public administration skills. Having people who work in public agencies who truly represent the community has the huge potential to make both working and living spaces more diverse and inclusive.
About the author:
Xiomara Guerrero is a graduate student in the Masters of Public Administration Program (Public Policy and Administration), with a specialization in Human Resources Management. She has earned her Bachelor of Science in Public Administration with a minor in Spanish from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. During her undergraduate studies, Xiomara interned for Legislator Monica Martinez 9thLegislative District in Long Island. Being part of the staff allowed her to interact within her community—raise awareness toward legislation, and deal with issues that were presented by continents within the district. As Xiomara continues her studies she is seeking internships in non-profit organizations as an advocate to improve policies and legislation affecting survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking, and related forms of gender violence.
Eunice Lee
I attended this annual American Society for Public Administration conference in Washington, DC from Sunday, March 10 to Tuesday, March 12. The theme for this year’s conference was “A Call for Action: Advancing Public Service,” and sessions were divided amongst five tracks: public finance, infrastructure, social equity, public service, and global public administration. Throughout my three days at the conference, I attended panels and workshops from several of these tracks with a personal focus on social equity, a particularly resonant theme for my line of work in police oversight.
Though discussions ranged from analysis of the toll of emotional labor on first responders to community engagement in long-term policy planning, speakers commonly envisioned a hopeful future for public administration. Many acknowledged the challenges to successfully implementing sound policy, and navigating the political landscape to get there then the inevitable crises that follow. However, panels clearly demonstrated the crucial and intensely collaborative work of practitioners in the field of public administration. Attendees shared recently released publications that could challenge or strengthen research with panelists, and noted areas for further exploration or links to other panels at the conference. It was inspiring to see individuals from a wide range of fields rallying together in the aims of making public service more equitable and effective.
ASPA also made a point to gather attendees from around the globe through events, talks, and a specific conference track dedicated to their work and subject matter interests. It also provided opportunities for different sections and chapters to meet. One such opportunity was a reception hosted by John Jay’s own Women in the Public Sector, which was attended by several John Jay alumni (as well as this year’s conference attendees). The reception was a highlight and wonderful reminder that we all have so much to learn from each other, and that this work cannot be pursued in silos. This was a unifying theme to my time at ASPA – I observed and benefitted greatly from the passionate, creative, and brilliant public servants who were actively advancing the field of public service, including our own faculty and my colleagues at John Jay.
Segun Olaniyi
Having the opportunity to attend ASPA 2019 was truly inspiring. Being able to listen and engage with students and professionals in their respected field was an eye opener. We as public servant have a responsibility to find innovative approaches to solve issues that impact our live. I was able to speak with professionals throughout the United States and just spoke about issues that are important. One of the topics that connected with me was a session on Efforts and Impacts of Community Organization, Nonprofits and Local Government Service Delivery. This topic addressed how there are misbalances within non-profit boards and management compared to the direct workers. He addressed the racial diversity in the organizational chart and introduces the questions of understanding how their should be more emphasis put on diversifying the amount of minorities on non-profit boards and within leadership.
In addition, the conversation I had with program director, Malcolm Oliver, who works at California Lutheran University that turned out to very uplifting. He gave some amazing advise on how to continue to grow my leadership skills and thrive in my field. Overall, the closing speech from Vice President Biden left me leaving the conference with more motivation than ever.
About the author:
Segun Olaniyi is a native of New York but was born in the United Kingdom. He moved to the United States with his family at the age of 9. He is a senior at John Jay College of Criminal Justice working on his Masters in Public Administration. Segun also attended John Jay College for his undergraduate degree and served as the President of African Students Association (ASA). He was a member of the Malave Leadership academy and worked on volunteer projects that involved non-profit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. He currently works at Center for Court Innovation and serves as a member of the Organization of the Advancement of Nigerians (OAN) and American Society of Public Administration (ASPA).
Gwen Saffran
From March 8-10, I attended the American Society for Public Administration’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. The theme of the conference was “A Call for Action: Advancing Public Service,” and panels and presentations focused on topics including advancing social equity, innovative and collaborative governmental action and services, diversity, and the future of public administration. All of themes converged in one panel I attended, Perspectives and Approaches for Promoting LGBTQ Equity. Panelists presented on a range of LGBTQ+ identities in various contexts. Most pertinent to my work as a research assistant was Dr. Roddrick Colvin’s presentation, “Nonbinary Gender Policies: Understanding How Agencies Adopt and Resistance to Change.” At a time when more and more jurisdictions are recognizing non-binary identities and providing third-gender options on identity documents, it was exciting to see other academics asking similar and important questions.
Following that panel, I presented as part of a panel titled Governing Toward Social Equity. Also part of the panel were Kirk Leach (assistant professor at the University of Arkansas) and Hannah Lebovits (doctoral student at Cleveland State University). The name of my presentation was “Emergent Non-binary Gender Identity Policy: Governing Toward Social Equity.” I discussed seven jurisdictions in the United States that offer an X gender marker (as opposed to an F or M) on some form of state-issued identification documents, as well as the findings of our qualitative analysis of these seven policies and the implications for public policy, public administrators, and public service values. It was exciting to present alongside academics asking hard questions and making important recommendations for public administrators to advance social equity.
Shortly after I returned home from the ASPA conference, 50 Muslim people were murdered in New Zealand while praying in their local mosques. There is, of course, no remedy to the loss experienced by the Christchurch community and the rest of the world, but it underscored the importance of the conversations being held at the ASPA conference. Continuing to ask hard questions about injustice and proposing and implementing policies and actions that promote equity and celebrate diversity is as important now as it was half a century ago. I strongly encourage other John Jay students to join the conversation.
About the author:
Gwen Saffran is in her second year at John Jay College pursuing an MPA studying Public Policy & Administration with a specialization in Criminal Justice Policy. She works as a research assistant with Professor Nicole Elias studying sex and gender in the public sector. Gwen is also a Tow Policy Advocacy Fellow through John Jay’s Prisoner Reentry Institute. She is placed at the Vera Institute of Justice, where she works on the Center for Sentencing and Corrections’ Safe Prisons, Safe Communities Initiative. The Initiative works with state and local departments of corrections to reform and reduce their use of solitary confinement.
by Dr. Nicole M. Elias and Dr. Maria J. D’Agostino:
In January 2019 we invited public administration scholars to contribute to our spring blog series, Implications of the #MeToo Movement for Academia. We asked bloggers to respond to the following questions: What does #MeToo mean for the world of higher education? What are the issues, dynamics, power structures, and practices that are taken for granted and make sexual harassment and sexual assault so prevalent in higher education? At the time, we were not certain what types of blog submissions we would receive. The responses were eye-opening and thought-provoking, ranging from personal #MeToo experiences to structural and policy recommendations aimed at mitigating sexual harassment, assault, and gender inequity.
The blog contributors acknowledge that the culture in academia, especially in academic departments, needs to be recognized and addressed in order to move from reactive to proactive #MeToo solutions. As the anonymous contributors illustrate, their choosing to be anonymous is mainly linked to their untenured status, department culture of silence, and potential repercussions of speaking out. These contributors are not alone in their experience, and the culture of silence is one that resonates with many women in academia. This pervasive culture sustains sexism, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment and assault in higher education.
Several practical suggestions have been made to move forward in order to break this silence and create safe, civil workplaces, particularly by moving us from a reactive to a more proactive approach to addressing #MeToo. David Shapiro emphasizes the barriers to reporting #MeToo incidents: “A detailed itemization of reasons not to report publicly need not be exhaustively recited (e.g., personal relationship with the offender, fear of retaliation, lack of belief in the helpfulness of the criminal justice system). In fact, BJS statistics for years 2015 and 2016 suggest that almost one-half of serious violent victimizations, including sexual assault, are not reported to the police. Unfortunately, obstacles to reporting may not be limited to the U.S.” As suggested by Shannon Portillo, senior colleagues need “to recognize that they set the tone for what is acceptable and tolerated, and who is seen as belonging to our field. Let’s all ensure that the stories about our field are the ways that we lift each other up and push the scholarship forward.”
One practical approach to address sexual harassment in academia, as discussed by Mohammad Alkadry, is the use of climate assessments as a means of exposing perpetrators before a victim comes forward. This tool would be used as a means to diagnosing organizational “health.” Similarly, Sean McCandless, makes several recommendations for individuals, including querying ourselves about our roles in creating safe workplace environments. Gender responsive budgeting is another avenue proposed by Shilpa Viswanath. She explains that gender responsive budgeting serves as a tool for reducing the number of sexual assaults. Such an approach highlights that in order to prevent #MeToo incidents, we need to recognize budgets are a reflection of our values and biases, and as such we should use resources to communicate priorities for addressing inequity.
Another practical idea communicated by the contributors referred to addressing the embedded social practices that inhibit inclusion. One example, is Sean McCandless’s suggestion to incorporate diverse and inclusive readings in course syllabi to emphasize the values of women, in general and to the field, as well as making diversity and inclusion the cornerstone of teaching. Such changes are important as they contribute to questioning deeply embedded biases and taken for granted practices in academia. As professors of future public servants this is a powerful opportunity to change structural and organizational practices. On a similar note, Richard Gregory Johnson advocates for inclusiveness via ally building. This approach entails coming together as a unit across social class, race, gender, etc. but also collaborating in professional organizational spaces in order to increase opportunities for mentoring and career growth for underrepresented scholars. As articulated by Amanda Olejearski, faculty, including women faculty, have to lead by example. She presents a metaphor for women in academia: “It’s like the turtle approach. Keep your head down, and you won’t get in trouble. But the only way for a turtle to make some headway is by sticking her neck out. Women mentoring one another takes many forms, sometimes the neckless turtle, but sometimes we stick our necks out for each other. In this era of #MeToo, we stand taller as we stand together.” Clearly, the #MeToo era is not without risk in academia, where reputation matters and stakes are high. Perhaps a way forward is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as suggested by Rod Colvin, to provide redress for the voices of everyone affected by sexual impropriety and misconduct, and provides the space “to speak openly, honestly and frankly about the complexities of power, gender inequity, and sexism” in order to “remediate ongoing and decades-old incidents between individuals.”
From these rich contributions, where do we go from here? Next steps should include sharing knowledge to address #MeToo. From formal outlets like conference panels and workshops to informally sharing personal stories, knowledge, and resources via social media or dialogue. Second, we need better tools to address #MeToo in academic institutions. Often, our responsibilities and options are ambiguous or unknown. To provide better tools, we should be explicit and proactive. This can take the form of events on campus that empowers students, faculty, and staff. Finally, academia is just now beginning the formal study of #MeToo. In addition to the practical work, we need to apply a scholarly lens to the topic. Given the deeply personal and sensitive nature of #MeToo topics, we should think seriously about what a scholarly agenda for #MeToo looks like. This is uncharted, yet critical, territory.
These are broad first steps, but as scholars we can do more. Along with identifying practical steps and setting a research agenda, we should reflect on the #MeToo movement itself. Specifically, the question of who is not included in this conversion and how can we bring them in? Marginalized populations that fall beyond traditional, heteronormative, white identities are often silenced. Thinking outside of gender norms and recognizing racial dimensions of #MeToo by exploring intersectional identities and questioning how #MeToo can be applied differently to different demographics is a key scholarly task. These are not easy tasks, however. The Reference Tool developed by AWPA-WPS beginning to tackle these issues by promoting work on substantive topics targeting underrepresented groups, sharing resources for research and teaching from underrepresented scholars and practitioners, and diversifying resources used in teaching and practice.
We want to thank all of our blog contributors to this series who have added much-needed perspectives to these challenging topics. To continue the scholarly dimension of this conversation, Public Administration Review will publish our “#MeToo in Academia: Understanding and Addressing Pervasive Problems” Viewpoint Symposium in 2020.
It is March 24, 2025, and Professor Smith has just received her reconciliation notification as she hurries to teach her public administration class at Big State University. Although she expected the notification to arrive this day, it nonetheless caught her off guard. It wasn’t the first time she received a notification, nor was it the first time she had interacted with the Office of the State Attorney General or their Division on Truth and Reconciliation (DTR), charged with addressing cases of sexual impropriety at work and other public settings.
In the past, she had offered support and testimony to friends, family, and co-workers via the encrypted online application on cases of sexual harassment and misconduct. She had also participated in scores of online training exercises, webinars, and “open dialogues” that were part of the Division’s work. Still, this reconciliation notification caught her a little off-guard.
Unlike her previous interactions with the DTR, Smith had never been asked to submit testimony about her personal experiences. This time she was being asked to recount events from nearly 20 years ago when she was a graduate student. Back then she was forced to rebuff several advances from Professor Xavier – a tenured professor – in her Department before she graduated. While the advances were considered mild by today’s standard, over time, Smith came to understand the inappropriateness of his behavior, and the effects it had on her and other individuals in the Department. She came to understand that his advances created an environment hostile to learning and working, but did not consider them to be life-altering incidents.
Smith had never discussed these experiences from graduate school. In fact, her testimony was being solicited by the Division at the request of Professor Xavier. He was using DTR’s proactive program to seek out and redress misdeeds that he had committed during his career as a professor and hoped Smith would participate in the process. Smith, for her part, had taken the online tutorial about the purpose and goals of ‘truth and reconciliation,” provided testimony about her experiences with Xavier, reviewed the testimonies of others affected by Xavier’s behavior (including Xavier), and now she was ready to select her preferred remedies and corrective actions. As she was satisfied with Xavier’s efforts to acknowledge and correct is behavior, she chose to accept his apology and archive her experiences. When asked by a colleague about her experiences with the DTR and Xavier, she said, “Look, I remember when the ‘Me Too’ movement started, we spent a lot of time and energy sorting through claims of inappropriateness and being made uncomfortable, from actual sexual misconduct. It was tedious, inequitable, and time-consuming. We needed a way to let the accused and accusers come forward and be heard outside of the criminal justice system and outside of the court of public opinion. The DTR provides that system. As my mom always said, when we know better, we do better … Xavier knows better, now he can do better.”
A systematic and transparent approach to addressing sexual impropriety and other hostile incidents is possible if we accept the following as true.
First, the ‘me too’ movement has been an undeniable force for good by giving voice to individuals who might not otherwise have their voices heard about the nature of sexual impropriety, including assault.
Second, by calling out and holding accountable individuals (mostly men) who have used their power and position to take advantage of others, no field or occupation has been immune to this social movement. Thus, we can expect more people to come forward and seek redress.
Third, despite various laws and policies, our current systems do not adequately prevent, protect or redress much of the bad behavior that spawned the ‘me too’ movement. This includes much of our criminal justice system which onerously places the burdens of proof on accusers, uses narrow definitions which cause many issues to fall outside of the law, and applies arbitrary statutes of limitations on many of the activities that are considered crimes.
As the ‘me too’ movement exposes bad actors and behaviors within our academic field, our professional discipline, and society in general, our approach and response should be more systematic, transparent and orderly.
I propose something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This Commission would be a forum for the accused, accuser, and bystanders. This is not a place for victims and survivors of illegal sexual harassment, assault or violence. We retain the criminal justice system for those cases. This forum is for any encounter that needs a resolution but falls outside of our criminal justice framework. It captures the voices of anyone affected by sexual impropriety and misconduct, which includes all of us. Beyond turning our attention to this important issue, the ‘me too’ movement has created an opportunity for us to create a system for redress that we probably needed long ago. We need a system that allows us to speak openly, honestly and frankly about the complexities of power, gender inequity, and sexism. We need a system that can remediate ongoing and decades-old incidents between individuals. We need a system that supports and encourages everyone to come forward and bear witness to the misdeeds of the pasts, included those who perpetrated misdeeds.
The incidents that occurred between Smith and Xavier are not uncommon. Unfortunately, we have never really had a system to properly adjudicate such cases. Now is our chance to create a new system; a system that allows for real truth and reconciliation with our past.
Roddrick Colvin Associate Professor of Public Administration San Diego State University Email: rcolvin@sdsu.edu
Roddrick Colvin is an Associate Professor of Public Administration in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University, where he teaches courses in public administration and criminal justice. His current research interests include public employment equity, police officers’ shared perceptions and decision-making, and lesbian and gay civil rights. His research has appeared in a number of scholarly journals, including the Review of Public Personnel Administration, Police Quarterly, and Women and Criminal Justice. He is also the author of the book Gay and Lesbian Cops: Diversity and Effective Policing (Lynne Rienner Publishing, 2012). Dr. Colvin earned undergraduate degrees in political science and philosophy at Indiana University–Bloomington, a graduate degree in public administration at Seattle University, and a doctorate degree in public administration at the University at Albany (SUNY).
Associate professors are in a weird space in the academy. We know enough to mentor our graduate and doctoral students— and maybe help junior faculty find the bathroom. But we still need mentors ourselves #fullby40.
Issues of gender bias in evaluations, the mommy penalty, the baby before tenure question , gender wage gap in academia are just some of the pressures facing female faculty members. Fortunately, many senior female faculty members, like the group over at @awparocks, embrace a supportive mentoring environment lightyears beyond the advice they received. Think back to some of the career advice you’ve received over the years, in light of #metoo— was it gendered? Disheartening? Make you consider an #altac career? Female faculty are more empowered than ever, and we have to attribute some degree of our success in advocating for ourselves to the #metoo movement. Leading by example enables all of us to be stronger, to be more confident in advocating for ourselves, our mentees, and our mentors. It’s like the turtle approach. Keep your head down, and you won’t get in trouble. But the only way for a turtle to make some headway is by sticking her neck out. Women mentoring one another takes many forms, sometimes the neckless turtle, but sometimes we stick our necks out for each other. In this era of #metoo, we stand taller as we stand together.
Amanda Olejarski Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Westchester University Email: AOlejarski@wcupa.edu
Dr. Amanda Olejarski is Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at West Chester University. She teaches courses in the MPA and DPA programs. Olejarski’s research interests include administrative discretion and communication, normative public policy implementation, and organizational learning and motivation. Her research has been published in American Review of Public Administration, Administration & Society, Public Integrity, the International Journal of Public Administration, and the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management. She recently published her book, Administrative discretion in action: A narrative of eminent domain. Olejarski serves as President of the Keystone State ASPA Chapter and as Chair of NASPAA’s Pi Alpha Alpha governance committee. She is MBTI certified from the Myers-Briggs Foundation and certified in Public Performance Measurement from the National Center for PPM. Originally, from N.J., Olejarski lives in King of Prussia, PA, with her hubby, son, and their cats. She enjoys patio gardening, and she loves Wawa.
“You won’t believe what he said to me. Please don’t tell anyone. Please don’t say anything to him.”
Sexism takes many forms, and as a result impacts individuals, communities, and work spaces differently. As women working in a space where sexist discourse was often used in the protected space of an advising session, a private conversation, or a classroom to minimize and marginalize women, we found it critical to think purposefully about how diverse tools can be deployed in varying contexts.
Sexism in academia is well-documented. Cole & Hassel’s recent edited volume, Surviving Sexism in Academia, provides a wealth of evidence that sexism is alive and well in the halls of higher education. In the opening chapter, Maldonado and Draeger outline the contours of how sexism is manifested in the academy, illustrating that “sexism can take the form of acts, attitudes, and institutional structures.” In other words,combatting sexism necessitates a multifaceted response, one that acknowledges systemic power, raises consciousness, and emphasizes diversity (10-11). Building off of this work, we argue that because the formsthat sexism takes to structure space and silence voices may shift over time, the responsemust reclaim space and voice in similarly multi-modal and adaptive forms.
A bit of background. We are both not-yet-tenured women in academia; we both entered the field/s of political science/ public policy/ public administration as professors just before the #metoo hashtag went viral on twitter in 2017, calling attention to sexual assault and harassment in the workplace. We thought—maybe now, finally, our concerns will gain traction! But alas, we remain anonymous as the backlash has been powerful.
Yet, this post is not about the #metoo movement on a national scale, but about how calling attention to sexism, in all its forms, including but not limited to sexual harassment and sexual assault, comes at a cost—a backlash that requires adaptability and resilience—or, we suppose, a willingness to relocate or withdraw from academia(sadly). More specifically, this post serves as (brief) casestudy in responding to sexism and effecting change in academia through leadership and mentorship that is grounded in a feminist reflexivity. Social change, after all, is rooted in reflexive learning that is grounded in solidarity, intersectionality, and critical praxis (Freire).
What follows is a brief account of the persistent sexism—sometimes obvious, but often subtle— that we have encountered since entering the academy as faculty members at a mid-sized university. We outline the tactics we have used to respond; note that these tactics are both multi-modal and adaptive over time and audience.
Our experience, anonymized
To start, it is important to acknowledge why we have chosen to write this as “anonymous and anonymous.” We have agreed to forego any recognition or credit, as we have been indirectly threatened with lawsuits for speaking out about our experiences. After all, as one colleague stated, and we paraphrase here: “we are putting their [the male faculties’] jobs at risk by talking openly about sexism.”
Sexism & Resistance
Years ago, before we entered the scene, the context for women working in this academic department was defined primarily by words weaponized for marginalization. The marginalization dispersed through patriarchal directives (“advice” and “requests”) and patronizing commentary (“compliments” or “simple questions”) defined an environment in which women graduate students and faculty came to share their experiences in whispers, often in the bathroom.
Not all of the men in the department thought or spoke this way. Some were appalled by hallway conversation, but still silent in response to “And of course I’m going [to this conference overseas], because they are paying for me to attend. I’m like a prostitute, pay me and I’ll come.”
The fact that conversations among women were whispered, shared in the bathroom or behind a closed office door, are testament to the marginalized status of women in the department. These conversations felt dangerous. “He’s going to write my letters of recommendation for the rest of my life,” said one student. “You cannot repeat this. I will lie and deny it,” said another woman. At the time, all of the tenured professors were men. They oversaw the dissertations, wrote the letters of recommendation, wrote the peer reviews for teaching, filed the tenure ballots.
This power dynamic encouraged the formation of layered protections for perpetrators. It reinforced perceptions that women were victims or resigned to the system, and in so doing women made themselves complicit in reinforcing sexism. Like many other settings, women were not likely to report harassment due to the risk. But in this department it was really more complicated than this. Women maintained and demanded silence of others (“trust”?) when they did share our experiences.
Women in the department, before we arrived, recognized and resisted sexism through communities of trust, but were unable or unwilling for any number of reasons to speak out—there were just too few women and too few vocal allies. The culture of the department was one of silence.
Eventually, some changes began to unfold and the sole-tenured woman in the department was hopeful (as she reported to us years later)—maybe there would be real change. An ally became chair. Frustrated with the silence, but also wanting to protect identities, he invited various offices around campus to speak to the department about climate and how it could be improved. The department heard presentations from HR (EOE) and the school’s Diversity office. Specific instances and names were excluded from all conversations. Speakers addressed issues in generalities, ineffectively. Over time, it became clear that no amount of conversation or information would challenge the behavior, much less the structures that protect it. The entitlement that served as the foundation for all of this sexism was girded by a strong sense of self-righteous indignation but also by power differentials, and the layers of protection those create.
After a training on how to enhance diversity while maintaining quality candidates led one male colleague shouting “I guess we just don’t hire white men here!” (please note that at the time the department had only one T/TT woman), finally, a TT woman was hired (Anonymous #1)!
Mentorship & the “women in academia” reading group
With one newly-hired TT woman and one tenured woman, we started a “women in academia” reading group. Our women graduate students were facing myriad challenges. There was the sexist discourse in our department, and the structures and sexism rampant in academia. We wanted to give our students the tools for success despite the obstacles. So we read about sexism in course evaluations, and had a workshop on how one can communicate teaching excellence in a portfolio despite gendered quantitative evaluations. We read about gendered citations and instructional readings, and how to incorporate women scholars in our classrooms and in our publications. We read about imposter syndrome and how we can recognize and combat it.
The “women in academia” reading group, which met at monthly intervals, provided a formal setting to (1) communicate strategies for pursuing teaching excellence in a context that relies on evaluation metrics which are known to be gendered, (2) present tools for identifying and overcoming imposter phenomenon [or syndrome], (3) explore techniques for interrupting sexism in the classroom and the workplace, and (4) determine ‘best practices’ for transforming spaces to be unwelcoming of sexism.
In addition to creating a formal setting for structured mentoring, the formation of the reading group also had the unintended consequence of opening up additional space for informal, unstructured mentoring. This informal mentoring was not a replication of previous responses, where safe spaces allowed women to discreetly divulge their stories but in doing so ultimately protected the status quo; this was a venue for women to share and learn to navigate shared experiences of sexism in the department. Following the first meeting of the reading group, several women graduate students individually expressed to women faculty how grateful they were to hear that they were not alone in their experiences. In many instances they were uncomfortable publicly disclosing events, but sought assistance in how to navigate them; women faculty were able to identify shared concerns and connect these with readings offering techniques to address them. These informal, unstructured mentoring sessions also revealed to women faculty inadequacies of the academic program in preparing graduate students for professional success. Women faculty then returned to formal, structured mentoring to determine preferences for alternative program features, and present these alternative program features to faculty in consideration for adoption. Group mentoring via formal structures and individual mentoring via informal structures, together, provided a mechanism for breaking the silence, exposing sexism, and preserving the safety of those in precarious positions. Most importantly, the “women in academia” reading group was adaptive–moving back and forth between formal and informal mentorship.
It was during this time that we heard from a trio of women graduate students. They had had enough. Their male peers were interrupting them in classes. One was told she was “cute when she did math.” One was repeatedly called “sweetie,” and when she objected was told “you’re cute when you’re angry.” Another, on her way to reading group, was asked, “Are you reading Fifty Shades of Grey?” The question was posed in front of a Woman of Color there for a job talk. One was told she would never get to TA the quants class. That’s not for girls, was the insinuation. The chair spoke with a few perpetrators individually, focusing on the unprofessionalism and sexism. He sent an email to the graduate students clearly indicating such behavior was unacceptable, unprofessional, and would not be tolerated. Faculty were cc’d.
In response the department again invited the diversity office to come in and conduct diversity workshops for the graduate students. At one point, a senior male colleague suggested it was “enough,” and we ought to stop “talking about climate and focus on professional work.” He was reminded that we were not dealing with an isolated case but with an environment. “Sexism in the workplace isa professional issue.” He agreed. In one of the workshops, the students collectively came up with climate priorities: Respect, Honesty, Trust, Empathy. A few days later a student returned to their space to find “STFU” [shut the fuck up] written on the board next to the priorities. When senior male scholars do not think of the productivity setting as an issue of professional development, neither will their protégés.
Modeling Power & Building a Critical Mass
Later that same fall, our newly hired, TT woman professor was sexually harassed. She (Anonymous #1) reported it to Title IX at the request of the faculty. Title IX investigators asked her what she was wearing. Behind closed doors, male colleagues insinuated that it was her fault. The offender was found “not guilty” of violating university policy, but was verbally admonished for his behavior – it was inappropriate and should not happen again. Our last meeting of the reading group that year focused on sexual harassment in academia, and the failures of Title IX.
While ultimately unsuccessful, use of the university Title IX complaint process worked as both a behavior modeling tactic – in that it specifically drew on institutional processes to call attention to inappropriate behavior in lieu of silencing it as had previously been done – and as a mentoring tactic. Title IX and internal complaint processes are particularly complicated to navigate; few in the department had prior experience with them and could not offer advice with regard to ‘best practices’, let alone offer perspective on the timing and steps involved in the process. Having experienced the process, the woman faculty member was able to assist graduate students in navigating it for themselves as the need arose.
With each wave of backlash, we found new footing and pushed forward; though a bit more angry and jaded, we persisted in pushing for a department the reflected the values that the members of it claimed to support.
There was also positive news; another search committee that year also hired a woman — we were up to three! For those who think a “critical mass” is important for mobilization, we were nowhere near it, but certainly closer than we had been. More importantly, perhaps, this round of hiring was not nearly as openly sexist as it had been previously.
That spring, the university’s campus-wide climate study results were unveiled. The chair used those as a launching point for a faculty meeting. The study revealed the impact of sexism and racism across the campus. Now with data to support the claim that sexism existed in our department, the chair said, “This is US.” One male colleague, an ally, said as we left the room “now thatwas leadership.” Later that evening, at a bar, in front of (now two!) newly-hired junior women faculty members, the formerly deflecting and rejecting full professors proclaimed the chair was “too harsh” and out-of-line. “The N is too small.”
Just months later, our department hosted another training, this time on how microaggressions marginalize. The facilitators emphasized the “impact, not intent” message. One full professor silently stared at his screen working on a syllabus. Another argued “it’s so much worse at other places;” “it’s much better than it used to be!” Deflection and rejection were the highlights of that meeting.
Ignorance of the problem was slowly replaced with disdain and hostility for attention paid to it. Nonetheless, “We used to just exist. Now we exist with agency,” said a female grad.
Reclaiming Voice/ Reclaiming Space
The informal and formal meetings among a growing number of women in the department provided a space for mutual support, and also (over time) created a space for shared action. Years of pursuing things the “right way” through proper procedures and top-down trainings had only gotten us so far. In the safe space of the reading group we felt heard and valued, but in the department we were still marginalized and silenced.
Then, after one of the newly hired women faculty members’ office was vandalized with a drawing of penis on her wall, another’s car tires were slashed (likely unrelated incidents), and the third forced to relocate her office to avoid her harasser, we organized a campaign to call attention to the pervasive sexism–this time using grassroots activist tactics.
We again asked the women in the department to give examples of how they have experienced sexism within the department–we anonymized the stories (both victim & perpetrator) and posted them on a small area inside the department. The goal: transform the space from one that was unwelcoming for women into one which is unwelcoming of sexism.
Prior to the organization of this activity, silencing women’s voices in the department had become routine; this silencing came in several forms, most commonly by questioning their ability to be ‘objective’ and rejecting their experiences as meaningful or reflective of larger issues of sexism within the department. There was a distinct lack of willingness to carry-on a broad discussion regarding the structures of marginalization in the department, especially those which targeted women. Women faculty in the department needed a mechanism to publicly share their experiences and expose the patterns of sexism, and this mechanism needed to be simultaneously quiet and deafening. They were also cognizant of the precarious position that participating in such an activity – which publicly exposed inappropriate behavior of many senior men in the department (although anonymously) – may place junior faculty in. Finally, they considered how such an activity could be a mentoring tool, allowing women graduate students to share their own experiences, hear about the (potentially similar) experiences of other women, and present these events in a manner which highlighted a collective approach to reclaiming space.
Toward a Reflexive Feminist Leadership Model of Resistance
The tactics we employed were rooted in critical praxis, wherein we were committed to developing among ourselves and among our allies a critical awareness of our shared reality. We did so through reflection and action. Within our groups, whether in women faculty-only spaces or in shared spaces, we emphasized purposive dialogue and equality amongst participants. Reflecting on our cumulative experiences—the good, the bad—there are a few relevant takeaways—lessons learned.
1. The tactics that we employed were adaptive, responding to the changing dynamics of the department (climate and structure).
2. Our ongoing attempts to respond to and address sexism in the department were met with varying levels of backlash from men in the department. Some members of the faculty dug their heels in and resisted change, suggesting that we were wrong-headed in our concerns. Tactics such as the anonymous notes were viewed as a direct attack on our colleagues, and, to some, was viewed as unnecessarily antagonistic. Others minimized the action as “being dramatic.” There was a cost to taking on an adversarial role and demanding change. As individuals we have experienced the psychological stresses associated with working in this space.
3. Although little has changed internally, we have created a close network of trusted allies. There is a shared sense of community, a sense of solidarity among the women in the department and a growing contingent of allied-men. This stems from our efforts to be self-reflective. The process of talking through problems and reflecting on the shared experiences as a group gave us a space to examine how our actions may inadvertently support (or in some cases fail to challenge) the existing power dynamic. Our actions now carry intentionality with regard to identifying power imbalances and challenging their status through strategic, collaborative action.
4. We were responsive to the needs and vulnerabilities of faculty and staff. This was vitally important, as only one of the women involved in this organizing effort was a tenured faculty member—the others were tenure track professors and doctoral students.
5. Outside of the department, there has been some move toward change. Our work has been supported, at least verbally, by many across campus. Our willingness to take action has been celebrated, though often behind closed doors, as important but risky.
So, what next and what costs are we willing to incur? In other words, how will we continue to claim space and reclaim our voices within a department resistant to change in an institution that is slow to change? We don’t have the answers, but we do argue that in the process we must both resist sexism, adopting tactics that foster agency, and adapt to the ever changing backlash.
Conclusions:
The multiple means by which sexism structures marginalization requires a multi-modal response. Yet, responding to or challenging these structures can place women in even greater isolation. The casepresented here provides ample evidence of the ways in which pushback by those perceiving a loss of power as the space and voice of women expanded and redefined parameters, and therefore prompted adjustments and creativity by women and their allies.
We offer that resisting sexism in the academy– especially in the #metoo era– must be reflexive.We suggest that we, as women faculty, look to feminist models of leadership that seeks to reclaim space and reclaim voice, while navigating backlash. We propose that a feminist leadership model should be manifest in mentorship as well as decisive activism grounded in solidarity.
Works Cited
Cole, Kristi, and Hollie Hassel, editors. Surviving Sexism in Academia: Strategies for Feminist Leadership. Routledge, 2017.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2012 [1970].
Maldonado, Heather, and John Draeger. “Surviving Sexism in Academia: Identifying, Understanding, and Responding to Sexism in Academia.” Surviving Sexism in Academia: Strategies for Feminist Leadership, edited by Kristi Cole and Hollie Hassell, Routledge, 2017.
The purpose of this blog is to discuss my thoughts on the Me Too Movement. First, I must address my involvement with women’s rights through the years. I have been a supporter of women’s rights all of my life. I watched my parents (mother and father) participate in civil rights organizations since the time of my youth. I also watched my mother participated in the graduate chapter of her sorority which was founded on the principles of social justice and public service.
I grew up in the East Bronx, New York with a keen sense of social justice and understanding the importance of community activism. However, I did not know that I was a feminist until taking Dr. Marsha Tyson Darling’s class while being enrolled in graduate school at Georgetown University. This was such a great realization for me to learn that men could be considered feminist as well. Though, I understand that some women believe otherwise. But as a Social Equity Scholar I know the value of allies. For example, victories from the Civil Rights Movement were not won because only African Americans took to the streets. Indeed, there were poor folks, Jewish folks, Asian folks, Hispanic folks, LGBT folks, priests and folks with disabilities. All of these groups were on the front-lines, arm in arm with African Americans fighting for civil rights.
I have been following and supporting the Me Too Movement since it first emerged in 2017. This movement is no doubt important as society fights against sexual harassment and violence against women. The good fortune is that the movement is also spreading to other countries such as India where violence against women has been imbedded in the culture for decades.
However, the movement must acknowledge and take responsibility for the fact that women of color have been victimized by sexual abuse for years. Often, this violence was committed by male employers and/or husbands. There has also been many articles written about women of color who clean offices at night only to be sexually accosted by their supervisors. These reports have also indicated that hotel cleaning staff, primarily poorer women of color, have been victimizedby male hotel guests who expose themselves while the cleaner is working.
The tragedy beyond being accosted is that nothing is generally done with the perpetrators of the above situations. This is because even in the 21stcentury, women of color, especially women of color from working class/poor backgrounds, with little education and who work low wage jobs, are seen as not having the same agency has White women from means and resources. Therefore, the challenge with the Me Too Movement is that it could have been started years before if in fact someone would have taken the claims of Black and Brown women seriously. Indeed it was not until high profile White female celebrities such Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow among others got involved with the movement that caused visibility. It is admirable that these women came forward and shared their stories of abuse. Their stories are worthy of illumination. However, the voices of women of color and refugee women continue to besilenced even within the larger Me too Movement. Please note that I am not victim blaming privileged and/or high profiled White women. However, what I am suggesting very clearly and concretely is that the effects of institutionalized racism, sexism and classism can continue to be observed even in a well-intentioned organization such as the Me too Movement.
Going forward, women in higher education can take lessons from the Me too Movement and focus on coming together as a unit (across social classes, races etc). The advantage of doing so will increase opportunities for mentoring and career growth. Society is no place near parity. Therefore, women need to take up places on organizational boards (public and private), assume leadership positions, such as academic department chairs, deans, provosts and presidents. I am so proud to have been appointed the first African American Department Chair by the first female Dean in the University of San Francisco’s School of Management history (USF was founded in 1855 and the School of Management/College of Business was started 95 years ago).
Finally, the value of ally building is important to everyone fighting for equity and inclusion. This has got to be the case with women in academia as well, specifically ASPA. Working with such sections such as DSJ, Ethics, LGBT Alliance and the like will help to strengthen the bonds of the women’s section and foster a commitment to advancing not only women’s right but the equal rights of all disenfranchised communities as well. It is clear that no identity group can conquer the insidious nature of hatred alone.
Dr. Richard Greggory Johnson III Professor and Chair for the Department of Public and Nonprofit Administration, School of Management University of San Francisco Email: rgjohnsoniii@usfca.edu
Dr. Richard Greggory Johnson III is a tenured Full Professor & Department Chair for the Department of Public and Nonprofit Administration, School of Management, University of San Francisco. He is also Director of the Business Minor in the School of Management as well. Dr. Johnson also chairs the USF IRB Committee. As a scholar Professor Johnson’s research centers on social equity within the fields of public policy, management, higher education and Human Resources Management. He has been teaching in higher education for almost twenty years and is widely published with several peer-reviewed books and over two dozen peer-reviewed journal articles. Professor Johnson holds graduate degrees from Georgetown University, Golden Gate University and DePaul University. He holds membership in: Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society; Pi Alpha Alpha Honor Society; Pi Gamma Mu Honor Society. Professor Johnson is also a life Member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated.
Since the #MeToo movement was founded to combat sexual harassment and assault, millions of women have identified and discussed their own experiences of assault. A perusal of “Academic Twitter” reveals that the academy, including public administration, has not been immune to the issues to which #MeToo points.
Advisors, colleagues, and friends tweet the hashtag, which prompt me to reflect on how workplaces can be hostile to differentness, including along lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and more. The academy has work to do. As an academic who identifies as male, there are things that I can do to help combat the hostile environments pointed to by #MeToo. To make another (and rather “meta”) point, I rely on sources written primarily by women and/or persons of color:
Be diverse and inclusive in syllabi. There are gender disparities in terms of who is assigned in course readings (see here and here). Readings by and about women (or, indeed, readings by and about persons part of any historically underrepresented group) need to be assigned more. Under-assigning readings by and about women could send the incorrect message that women are not important to the field. And a lack of possible publications to include in syllabi is not due to a lack of women writing. Recognizing the unique contributions of women in classroom syllabi is one powerful way to make a difference, particularly to acknowledge unsung heroes of the field, such as Frances Harriet Williams, Laverne Burchfield, and many more. Being more diverse and inclusive in syllabi is also important for today’s doctoral students, who are tomorrow’s professors. Students, after all, are more likely to assign a reading in their own courses if they had once been assigned that reading.
Make diversity, inclusion, and equity cornerstones of teaching. For decades, many students might have considered themselves lucky if issues of diversity, inclusion, and social equity were discussed in their courses, and academic programs can helpimprove coverage of diversity in the literature. There are lingering questionsas to whether these topics are assigned in some curricula at all. It is encouraging to see several texts (see hereand hereas two examples) that make these topics cornerstones rather than subjects discussed in passing. To be equitable administrators, students should be taught ways to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity and to learn counter narratives to hegemony.
Embrace nervousness. Both instructors and students should become more proficient in understanding how injustices come about, how they are defined (and who defines them and power dynamics therein), and how to address them. Difficult discussions need to be had in classrooms about what causes prejudice. Nervousness about any issue of equity has to be overcome in order for new possibilities to be realized. As Mary Parker Follett once noted, conflict is necessary and should be creative so that multiple voices, recognizing the other’s interests as their own, forge new and more inclusive realities.
Query ourselves. To me, public administration is about improving lives. From birth to death, public administration can improve the quality of life in ways that would not be possible if public administration were not present. Despite these goals, public administration has been culpablein creating and perpetuating injustices by treating some lives as less worthy than others. This is unacceptable, and public administration needs to admit wrong and take active stepsto promote justice. If we want change, we must directly counter prejudice to create true communities. But most of all, we need to query ourselves. We are not neutral social actors. We have to examine ourselves about our roles in creating safe workplaces. Querying (or even queering) our own privilege is a starting point.
Sean McCandless Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the University of Illinois Twitter: @seanmcc_pa
Sean McCandless works as an assistant professor of public administration at the University of Illinois at Springfield. His current research focuses on the roles played by LGBTQ campus center directors as frontline bureaucrats combatting youth homelessness. Sean serves as the chair elect of the Section on Democracy and Social Justice (DSJ) of the American Society for Public Administration; is completing a elected term as board member of the Public Administration Theory Network; and was twice an ASPA Founders’ Fellow (2016 and 2017) and also an ASPA International Young Scholar (2016). Along with Dr. Rashmi Chordiya (Seattle University) and Dr. Nicole Elias (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY), he has helped convene workshops on issues of social justice at ASPA-affiliated conferences. Finally, he and his mentor, Dr. Mary Guy, are currently working on an edited book on social equity, scheduled to be released by Melvin & Leigh in 2020.
In September 2018, as part of the National Campus Awareness Month, Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) situated in the United States Department of Justice, published survey statistics on sexual violence on American college campuses. Unsurprisingly, young women are victims of the highest rates of dating violence and sexual assault. According to the statistics, in 2017, one in 10 teens reported being physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend and, one in 5 young women were sexually assaulted while they were in college.
Researchers, activists and journalists have significantly studied the risk factors of sexual victimization and intervention outcomes on college campuses, this blog post explores the administrative and budgeting challenges of implementing policies to prevent sexual violence on college campuses. In this commentary, I argue on behalf of budgeting for sexual violence, not just exclusively on college campuses but, also earlier on in schools and later on in the workplace. While objective policy reports and strong legislations are an essential pre-requisite, mandatory budgeting for the implementation and sustenance of these policy solutions and legislations is imperative.
In the recent decades federal programs and state laws have ensured steady funding to programs targeted at preventing sexual violence on American campuses. For instance, the OVW currently administers 25 grant programs authorized by the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 and subsequent legislation. The OVW’s campus program claims to have awarded more than $131 million to colleges and universities since, 1998 to help them improve their prevention and response efforts. These programs are designed to develop the nation’s capacity to reduce domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking by strengthening services to victims and holding offenders accountable The OVW even performs evaluations of the effectiveness of its campus grants and qualitatively measures successful outcomes
However, despite OVW’s efforts we know that funding alone doesn’t reduce the incidence of sexual assault. There is evidence that colleges and universities that have received federal grant money are being increasingly investigated for Title XI violations. What then is the solution?
Scope and circumstances resulting in sexual violence occur much before female students enter college campuses. Sexual violence is rampant across middle and high schools in America, and the statistics are staggeringly disturbing.
K-12 school infrastructure in the United States is grossly ill-equipped to combat sexual violence, neither are there policies, nor is there streamlined government funding to middle and high schools.
In addition, the very expanse of American school and college education is mindboggling. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) there are some 139,874 elementary and secondary schools and 7,201 post-secondary institutions as of 2016. From an administrative standpoint it would be unrealistic for the OVW to consistently administer and evaluate grant money to all these institutions. How then, do American schools and colleges wage warfare against proliferating sexual abuse on campus? The answer might be in Gender Responsive Budgeting.
What is Gender Responsive Budgeting?
Public administration scholars argue that: social and economic structural differences between men and women cause marked differences in the impact of government resource allocation and expenditure especially, in sectors such as public health, public education, public transport and public childcare. Structural differences between men and women refer to: women earning and saving less at interrupted intervals, women being over-represented in the unpaid care economy, women having discontinuous work histories and, women disproportionately being victims of sexual violence. Hence, budget statements which are presented as ‘neutral’ financial aggregates can hardly be unbiased or impartial if the revenue and expenditure decisions have differential impacts on men, women, transgendered, disabled and minorities.
Recognizing these inherent discrepancies in resource allocation, close to 80 countries around the world have implemented gender responsive budgeting at the federal, state or local levels since, 1985. Yet, the United States, despite its poor ranking on gender parity has remained agnostic to gender responsive budgeting and has refused to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) – a landmark international bill that affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equality for women around the world.
To fight sexual violence on college campuses, institutions might have to start accounting, acknowledging and appropriating resources for sexual abuse earlier in the education pipeline. The government might also have to mandatorily require budgeting for the prevention of sexual violence in both public and private sector organizations. It is time that school districts, state and the federal government recognize that the ‘experience’ of formal education is different for girls and women in America. To create a gender-neutral learning environment, we need to budget for the (obvious) incidence of sexual violence earlier on.
Shilpa will be presenting her research on Gender Responsive Budgeting along with gender scholars Dr. Helisse Levineand Dr. Meghna Sabharwal at the ASPA 2019 National Conference in Washington D.C. If you happen to be at the conference this March 8-12th, do stop by to learn more about Gender Responsive Budgeting.
Shilpa Viswanath Ph.D Candidate at Rutgers University Email: shilpa.viswanath@rutgers.edu
Shilpa Viswanath is a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University – Newark. Her doctoral thesis looks at Public Sector Unionism in New Jersey and is being co-advised by Dr. Norma Riccucci and Dr. Stephanie Newbold . Shilpa is closely associated with American Society for Public Administration’s – Section for Women in Public Administration (SWPA). In fall 2019, Shilpa will begin teaching at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse as an Assistant Professor of Public Administration.
Women and men in academia are entitled to a decent learning environment and a safe workplace where they can learn and work. Women and men are also entitled to equality in professional development and growth opportunities. The recent #MeToo movement has made many of us wonder when the movement will fully reach academia.
Sexual harassment and assault are mostly about power, and academia is generally not known for power-free departments and faculties. I was disappointed with the extent to which academia has been spared much of the #MeToo attention. I am also disappointed by the lack of substantial proactive action on the part of academic departments and units.
The bravery of the movement earns my unreserved respect and I am glad to see this issue forced to the forefront of public attention. There is no surprise that some women face these terrible atrocities in what is supposed to safe workplaces. Women who have exposed such practices are brave and assume risks to their careers as well as within their own lives.
The Anita Hill testimony during the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas did not end the accused nominee’s court prospects. However, the testimony left an unmistakable impact on organizations in terms of dealing with sexual harassment complaints. Organizations then scrambled to add sexual harassment to their human resources policy manuals. Things appear quite different with the organizational response to the #MeToo movement. Organizations tend to wait for an allegation, and respond by firing the offender and/or they financially settle with the victims. We have reduced ourselves to the role of spectators waiting for the next spectacle of sexual harassment or assault story to break out. That is a reactionary approach.
We, as a society, might be failing victims of sexual behavior and assault if we continue to rely exclusively on them to expose perpetrators of sexual offenders and harassers among us. In fact, in many cases, non-victims know who these people are and what they are doing. However, we don’t start paying attention until a victim comes forward. There may be a reasonable respect for victims’ privacy that discourages many of us from outing victims as we expose perpetrators. Nonetheless, allowing a known perpetrator to continue to survive in organizations is a bad outcome and there should be ways to reconcile protecting victims and exposing perpetrators.
How can academic units be proactive about sexual harassment questions? There are many ways for us to do. Climate assessments are just a small example. They may be used to take the pulse of an organization. We can ask if someone was ever subjected to sexual harassment or bullying or assault in a workplace; we should also ask people in these climate studies if they heard of or know about such instances. If a climate assessment raises a red flag, we can investigate further and move to expose these perpetrators. Waiting for victims to come forward is an indicator of a sick organizational culture. Exposing perpetrators before a victim comes forward is the true sign of organizational health.
It is good that the #MeToo movement is getting perpetrators of sexual harassment and sexual assault busted. However, a better measure of our decency as employers, as colleagues, and as a society is when we bust perpetrators before victims are ready to come out. Let us all look around and do our part to ensure that our organizations are safe workplaces. That is what an #UsToo movement would look like.
Mohamad G. Alkadry, Ph.D Professor and Head of the Public Policy Department at the University of Connecticut Email: mohamad.alkadry@uconn.edu
Mohamad G. Alkadry serves as a Professor and Head of the Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut. He previously held academic and administrative appointments, and was tenured at, Florida International University in Miami, FL, West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA.
He received his Ph.D. from Florida Atlantic University (2000) and his Masters of Public Policy and Public Administration from Concordia University in Quebec (1996). His undergraduate work was done at Carleton University in Canada (2002, 2004) and the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.
Dr. Alkadry has over 50 peer-reviewed articles, peer-reviewed book chapters, journal symposia. He is also co-editor and co-author of three books: Women and Public Service: Barriers, Challenges and Opportunities (2013, 2014),These Things Happen: Stories from the Public Sector (2002), andScaling Up Microenterprise Services(1998). His work appears in Review of Public Personnel Administration, International Journal of Organizational Theory and Behavior, Public Administration Review, Administration and Society, Public Integrity, Journal of Education Finance, Social Work in Health Care,Public Productivity and Management Review,Public Administration and Management,Administrative Theory and Praxis, among other journals.
Dr. Alkadry’s practitioner experience includes service as a senior research associate at the Center for Urban Redevelopment and Empowerment (Florida Atlantic University) and as a Value-for-Money (performance) Auditor with the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (Ottawa). Dr. Alkadry has authored in excess of fifty community and professional studies in areas of governance and public management.
The ‘me too’ movement began as a collective voice to aid victims from low-wealth communities, yet its statistics do not directly and specifically address issues of wealth, income, and class.
While National Crime Victimization Survey statistics disclose an approximate per capita consistency of sexual assaults from 2015 to 2017 (i.e., 1.6; 1.1; 1.4 per 1,000, respectively), and EEOC statistics from 1997 through 2011 on sexual harassment disclose an uptick in no reasonable cause findings from 41.40% to 53% arising from sexual harassment charges filed over this period (with EEOC charges received declining from 15,889 in fiscal year ’97 to 11,364 in ’11), the likelihood of underreporting sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment in the workplace, imprecisely and noticeably persists at the grassroots level monitored by organizations such as ‘me too.’ Like much public data, drilling down into individual cases seems both impractical and undesirable, yet a distinction should be made between absence of a formal record and absence of an underlying act of sexual misconduct.
A detailed itemization of reasons not to report publicly need not be exhaustively recited (e.g., personal relationship with the offender, fear of retaliation, lack of belief in the helpfulness of the criminal justice system). In fact, BJS statistics for years 2015 and 2016 suggest that almost one-half of serious violent victimizations, including sexual assault, are not reported to the police. Unfortunately, obstacles to reportingmay not be limited to the U.S.
Perhaps, the ‘me too’ movement has amplified otherwise silent voices in seeming opposition to the perception that some voices count more than others. Moving beyond the formal criminal justice system, including police, public prosecutors, and judges, the ‘me too’ voice is louder in concert with other voices not contingent upon support from this system of justice but amplified through informal mutuality of victimhood. However, while ‘me too’ serves to organize informally victims of reported and unreported sexual misconduct and gives them a social media platform, it does not mitigate information risk (i.e., assurance of integrity of the claim). Additionally, all categories of sexual-related wrongdoing are not equivalent: crimes are heterogeneous in their fact patterns and seriousness. A set of rules and effective process are necessary to analyze the relevant conduct apart from overbroad legal offense jargon that may serve to aggregate disparate data misleadingly and impair the development of theoretical and conceptual research about causation.
The reports of victims are varied. Ultimate causes need to be identified and parsed out or inferred from proximate causes. For example, while unchecked executive discretion may cause one incident, another may be the immediate result of situational dynamics such as individuals working long together in invisible venues (e.g., business travel). While non-consensual sexual conduct is wrongful, superficially consensual conduct in fact (i.e., circumstances of assent) may be deemed non-consensual in law (e.g., sexual conduct against a minor). In particular, inequality in the relationship (e.g., instructor over student) may be an under examined factor of causation, and in general the data gathered from criminal justice sources may not adequately represent the problems.
The original vision of ‘me too’ seems to be neglected: are there disparities in wealth, income, and class such that this broad power imbalance results in unequal protection under the law? Are the laws adequate both in scope of protection and range of enforcement? Are there proxies or instrumental variables from which to infer the frequency and severity of sexual misconduct in the workplace? Are there key variables such as social, economic, and political inequalities that influence reporting within the criminal justice system? Is mitigation of the risk of sexual misconduct more a managerial than a legal problem; if so, how would the public and policymakers become adequately informed about potentially proprietary data in the private sector; how are the managers to be governed without robust access to information by impartial and independent regulators and supervisors? The data accumulated and analyzed to date seem materially incomplete from which to draw clear solutions and changes to public policy.
I propose the following action items for academia, the most respected fact-finders in our society, investigating like a multidisciplinary task force:
Secondary research should be conducted, using systematic and other reviews of authoritative literature, to assess the limits, strengths, and deficiencies in existing policies and laws, both domestically and internationally. The problem(s) demands a clearer and more general formulation. As data sources vary by jurisdiction (e.g., the American states’ reports) and the problem of sexual misconduct seems to transcend not only American state boundaries but countries’ boundaries, there would likely be an abundance of literature demanding further analysis and reconciliation. Common factors needs to be parsed out of the disparate literature to develop a more transparent assessment of causality. Moreover, experts across jurisdictions, including institutions focused on sexual misconduct such as ‘me too,’ could provide insight beyond the statistics generated through official sources. Consideration may be given to identifying underexplored units of analysis such as the workplace, especially within the context of how policy and law are actually implemented and their effects on the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of reporting on sexual misconduct. Essentially, secondary research should not only integrate prior authoritative findings but interrogate these as well: substantial issues such as data deficiencies and policy limitations to remedy such deficiencies require identification and analysis across jurisdictions, determining what works (or not).
Theoretical and conceptual research should be conducted, using case studies and other explorations of sexual misconduct inside and outside the workplace to postulate common factors heretofore covert or under-researched (e.g., effects of unchecked managerial discretion, effects of monopolization of the criminal investigative and prosecutorial processes, inconsistency and unreliability of accountability mechanisms such as internal watchdogs / auditors). The development of comparative case studies across jurisdictions, domestic and international, would likely provide a fertile source of information about sexual misconduct, including how it progresses, how it evades detection, how accountability is impaired, and so on. Comparative case studies may be especially important with crimes such as sexual misconduct where personal and professional boundaries are stretched, if not perverted. Broadly, sexual misconduct often implicates an overbearing aggressor and under protected victim. How accountability mechanisms did not succeed in the prevention or timely detection of many of these cases is an issue that demands in-depth interviews of a highly intimate nature that may fill out the bare statistics and data gathered to date. Essentially, theoretical and conceptual discussion should move beyond past statements: grassroots responses such as ‘me too’ may signify both policy and data failures. Problem solving may benefit from such analytical and creative restatement.
David M. Shapiro, CPA Fraud Risk and Financial Crimes Specialist Email: dshapiro@jjay.cuny.edu
David M. Shapiro, CPA (inactive) is a Fraud Risk and Financial Crimes Specialist. He is also an expert generally on financial investigations and law enforcement. His extensive background includes work as an FBI (public sector) special agent / assistant legal advisor, assistant (public) prosecutor, and corporate (private sector) investigator. In brief, David has focused on conduct and financial crime risks.
David serves as a Distinguished Lecturer and Coordinator of the Fraud Examination and Financial Forensics program at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, instructing in the fields of inspection and oversight, fraud examination, and financial forensics (FEFF). He is the coordinator for the FEFF program. He has published articles in the areas of accounting, finance, and risk management. He recently wrote a special chapter for the book “How They Got Away With It: White Collar Criminals and the Financial Meltdown.”
David was an expert management consultant, having completed assignments in the fields of risk management, fraud investigations, and investor due diligence in a variety of contexts, including mergers and acquisitions. To contact David please use his professional email address: dshapiro@jjay.cuny.edu or work telephone no.: (212)393-6882.
As a graduate student I attended the Midwest Political Science Associate conference. It was my first academic conference, and I was excited to meet many of the scholars I had read in the field. I was fortunate to attend a dinner with quite a few senior scholars. After the dinner I was thrilled to be invited out for drinks with some of them. At the end of the evening, one of them insisted on walking me back to my hotel. I naively thought it was a faculty member being overly protective of a student in a city at night. Unfortunately, once we arrived in front of my hotel and I tried to say goodnight, he tried to force a kiss on me. Maybe he didn’t recognize the gross inequity in power in the positions we had. Maybe he was just acting on an attraction. He sent me into a spiral of questioning my own worth and intelligence. Maybe I would never be taken seriously as a scholar. Maybe I didn’t belong at that conference or in this field. Maybe there was something uniquely wrong with me.
The power of the #MeToo movement founded by Tarana Burke is the power of storytelling. When Ms. Burke started the hashtag that eventually went viral with the help of celebrities, scholars, students, and women from every walk of life, she knew her story and her trauma were not unique. It’s the commonality in these stories that is truly horrifying and moving.
I told a friend, a fellow graduate student, my story at the time, but I knew there was no complaint to file, no public outrage. I felt like an interloper in a field dominated by men. I didn’t want to speak out or seem high maintenance or call attention to my otherness in this space. As I progressed in graduate school and early in my career, I learned that other women had similar stories. There were whispers shared about scholars you shouldn’t be alone with or who the safe men really were in the field. I learned as best I could, and navigated the field based on whispers and guidance from strong mentors of all genders. I knew early on I wanted to become a leader in the field, I wanted to mentor future generations of scholars, and ensure that other students didn’t experience what I had. I don’t want to be a part of a field that is seen as only old, white, and male.
Unfortunately, the #MeToo movement has shown that my story is not unique. Fortunately, the #MeToo movement has also shown that there are brave women willing to speak out, share their stories, and demand that things change. Public administration is not exempt from this moment. Our field must change. We should support women speaking up and sharing their stories. But, this moment is not just about women sharing their stories. We should encourage senior scholars of all genders to be strong mentors and create an environment where we don’t turn the other way when we hear whispers about our colleagues. This is a moment for senior colleagues to recognize that they set the tone for what is acceptable and tolerated, and who is seen as belonging to our field. Let’s all ensure that the stories about our field are the ways that we lift each out up and push the scholarship forward.
Shannon Portillo, Ph.D. Assistant Vice Chancellor KU Edwards Campus Associate Professor School of Public Affairs & Administration Email:sportillo@ku.edu Twitter: @Prof_SP
Shannon Portillo is Assistant Vice Chancellor of Undergraduate Programs at the KU Edwards Campus and an Associate Professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. Dr. Portillo takes an interdisciplinary approach to her work pulling on organizational theories rooted in Public Administration and Law and Society to explore how rules and policies are carried out within public organizations. To date she has done work in a broad array of organizations including local government, the military, courts, policing, and higher education. Using a variety of methods, she collects empirical data to assess how social, cultural and legal factors influence the day-to-day operations in these organizations. Teaching and research interests include social equity, social justice, organizational theory, and law and public management. Her work has appeared in Law & Policy, Administration & Society, Law & Social Inquiry, Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory and Public Administration Review among other outlets.
by Dr. Nicole M. Elias and Dr. Maria J. D’Agostino:
The #MeToo movement, which has rocked politics, media, business and entertainment, is exploding with full force in academia.
What does this mean for the world of higher education? What are the issues, dynamics, power structures, and practices that are taken for granted and make sexual harassment and sexual assault so prevalent in higher education?
Most recently, Karen Kelsky conducted a crowd sourced survey of sexual harassment in the academy that documents more than 2400 cases. The implications of the #Metoo Movement for academia span common practices, policies, and culture in higher education. #MeToo experiences have emerged from teaching, mentoring, and research arrangements beyond the classroom. These incidents have prompted a larger conversation and rethinking of the power dynamics in academia; namely, the role of institutions and individuals in preventing sexual harassment and assault. The #MeToo movement presents an opportunity to question and change the assumed practices and structures that perpetuate and render sex and gender inequity invisible. This blog thread will run throughout the Spring 2019 semester with a contribution from Dr. Shannon Portillo. Contributors to this series provide diverse perspectives on #MeToo. We invite anyone interested in these topics to join our discussion with the aim of offering potential solutions to these difficult challenges. If you have questions or would like to contribute, please contact us at: wps@jjay.cuny.edu.
Six students from John Jay College’s MPA program participated in the 2018 Northeastern Conference on Public Administration (NECoPA). The NECoPA Conference took place in Baltimore, Maryland from Friday, November 2, 2018 – Sunday, November 4, 2018. This academic conference provided opportunities to present research, participate in panels and workshops, and engage with colleagues in networking events. Below are reflections from the conference written by Emily Cole-Prescott, Gwendolyn Saffran, Shanelle Greenidge, Sofia Calsy, and Uroosa Malik.
Emily Cole-Prescott
This November, I had the opportunity to present at the Northeast Conference on Public Administration (NECOPA). The conference highlighted new research on a wide range of public policy and administrative topics, from gender, health care and the pay gap to marijuana reform and mayoral authority. The primary theme of the conference focused on blind spots within public administrative policy and practice. Workshops and panel presentations shared the research at a digestible level for both students and professors.
The workshop of Professors Elias and Chordiya challenged attendees to analyze mayoral decision-making authority. Late one evening in August 2017, Mayor Pugh ordered the removal of Confederate statues throughout Baltimore, using the State’s Charter as justification, that allows the Mayor to make decisions for public safety and welfare purposes. However, Baltimore has a contract with the Maryland Historical Trust that allows the Trust to have input on such decisions. Students, professors, and professionals within the field of public administration engaged in a conversation about whether the Mayor overstepped her authority to make such a decision, and an array of perspectives were discussed. In general, attendees seemed to agree with the moral concept of the Mayor’s removal of the statues, noting that such an act required bravery. Attendees expressed concern that the decision could be legally challenged; however, attendees generally agreed that within the political context, removal of the statues represented a public benefit.
Such discussions are critical to both the academic and practitioner of public administration. Decisions within public agencies are often fraught with political concerns that, in some cases, merit swift resolution. Other concerns may require a calculated decision path that involves detailed analysis of alternatives, stakeholder collaboration, and strategic implementation. This case study demonstrates the pressing matters of which public administration professionals are often faced. Although in this case, the elected representative made the decision, appointed officials such as City Managers and department directors face and must resolve similar, pressing matters on an ongoing basis. Therefore, this conversation is critical to the professional development of future public administrators. Similar discussions were continued the next day of the conference, in “Managing Public Organizations in the 21st Century: Navigating Political, Social and Fiscal Challenges,” where panelists debated what it means to be a public administrator now and how administrators navigate the many political, social and fiscal challenges of public organizations.
The NECOPA conference provided growth opportunities for those developing their leadership skills. As a student researcher, I had the experience of sitting on a panel with four other John Jay students to present the implications of the #MeToo movement. Each panelist shared research on such factors as gender identity records, sexual harassment training, and implicit bias. Uroosa Malik discussed how the #MeToo movement has actually existed for more than thirteen years but has recently been invigorated by social media initiatives. Sofia Calsy explained how implicit bias limits leadership and career growth for women. Shanelle Greenidge presented research about the transparency of Offices of Inspector Generals, and Gwen Saffran and I presented our research on assessment of the X marker for gender identity within the legal and political context.
The NECOPA conference connected me to like-minded peers, professors, and potential contacts for continued professional development. As a primarily-online student, this conference was a dynamic opportunity to interact with individuals in my field. I look forward to staying in contact with these professionals as our careers progress.
About the author:
Emily Cole-Prescott is a Graduate student at John Jay College where she studies Public Administration and Policy with a specialization in Management and Operations. Emily was a Research Assistant for Professor Elias. She has worked for twelve years in various local government roles, focused primarily on land use development. Emily graduated from Western CT State with a BA in English and recently had the opportunity to work with the Center for Compassion, Creativity and Innovation and Dr. Chris Kukk on various research and community-driven initiatives about how to grow compassion within society. Emily lives in southern Maine with her husband and two dogs.
Gwendolyn Saffran
From November 2-4, 2018, I attended the Northeast Conference on Public Administration (NECoPA) in Baltimore, Maryland, hosted by the University of Baltimore. I went to NECoPA with professors and students from John Jay; most of us were presenting on topics relating to gender issues in the public sector, but also on transparency in government, diversity, and issues in health care and Medicaid. The conference opened with the Social Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (SEDI) Workshop, presented by Professors Rashmi Chordiya (Seattle University), Nicole Elias (John Jay College), and Sean McCandless (University of Illinois, Springfield). The workshop’s aim was to examine how issues of SEDI manifest in public service. The presenters used the case of Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh’s late-night removal of Baltimore’s Confederate statues. Workshop participants discussed not only the issues of social equity and racial justice surrounding Confederate monuments, but Mayor Pugh’s latitude to unilaterally decide to remove the monuments. Despite the controversial nature of the subject, participants could agree that it is the job of public administrators not only follow procedure but to consider what is fair, just, and equitable.
In the following session, I was part of a panel titled “#MeToo: Implications for the Public Sector Workplace.” The other John Jay students on the panel were Emily Cole-Prescott, Shanelle Greenidge, Uroosa Mallik, and Sofia Calsy. The panel discussed non-binary gender identity markers, transparency in government, the #MeToo movement, and implicit bias in the workplace. The name of my presentation, which I presented with Emily Cole-Prescott, was titled “The ‘X’ Marker: Implications of Non-binary Gender for Public Administration and Policy.” We discussed seven jurisdictions in the United States that offer an X gender marker (as opposed to an F or M) on some form of state-issued identification documents. We discussed the findings of our qualitative analysis of these seven policies and the implications for public policy, public administrators, and public service values. The academic literature discussing gender change policies and non-binary identities is very small, so it was exciting to be able to contribute to the academic conversation and discuss this topic with academics and current and future public administrators.
In the days since our all-women panel presented at NECoPA, a record number of women have been elected to the House of Representatives. There were also historic wins in both state and federal legislative positions for LGBTQ public servants, as well as people of color and Muslim people. As the United States continues to diversify, it is important to elevate these voices, and I thank NECoPA for giving us the opportunity to speak.
About the author:
Gwen Saffran is in her second year at John Jay College pursuing an MPA studying Public Policy & Administration with a specialization in Criminal Justice Policy. She works as a research assistant with Professor Nicole Elias studying sex and gender in the public sector. Gwen is also a Tow Policy Advocacy Fellow through John Jay’s Prisoner Reentry Institute. She is placed at the Vera Institute of Justice, where she works on the Center for Sentencing and Corrections’ Safe Alternative to Segregation Initiative. The Initiative works with state and local departments of corrections to reform and reduce their use of solitary confinement.
Segun Olaniyi
Being able to attend NECOPA was an amazing experience. I was able to learn a lot about different policies that are affecting our communities in different fields. From the #metoo movement to the opiate crisis, these topics will somehow impact our lives either directly or indirectly. When I attend the SEDI workshop regarding Baltimore’s mayor, Catherine Pugh, removing a Confederate statue before going through the proper channels, it opened the floor to questions of what consequence can occur. When you think about how previous Presidents have used executive orders to do similar things on a macro level. It has empowered President Trump to implicate travel bans and recently plans to not allow anyone to just become a citizen because they were born on US soil. In my opinion, Mayor Pugh, was fair with her actions to remove the statute. However, the question may arise if this starts a domino effect and cause other Mayors to overstep their authority. The implications of how the political standpoint it may present an interesting discussion in the future.
Having the opportunity to present my topic on home health market at NECOPA was refreshing. I spoke about new policies in New York possibly forming monopoly agencies in the home health market. I was able to interact with people that had a lot of interest in my topic. I was even surprised that people as me questions regarding some of the benefits of the policy I was addressing. I didn’t know the full answer, but it allowed me to think about different ways to improve my research going forward.
About the author:
Segun Olaniyi is a native of New York but was born in the United Kingdom. He moved to the United States with his family at the age of 9. He is a senior at John Jay College of Criminal Justice working on his Masters in Public Administration. Segun also attended John Jay College for his undergraduate degree and served as the President of African Students Association (ASA). He was a member of the Malave Leadership Academy and worked on volunteer projects that involved non-profit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. He currently works at the Center for Court Innovation and serves as a member of the Organization of the Advancement of Nigerians (OAN) and American Society of Public Administration (ASAP).
Segun’s research examines new provisions adopted by New York State’s attempts to control Medicaid fraud and labor marketing committed by home health agencies. Segun is hoping to explore the implications of these new policy approaches and how it effects Licensed home care agencies and Consumer Direct Personal Assistance Program through a qualitative analysis. Segun will be interviewing stakeholders such as caregivers, clients, agencies and insurance companies. The conclusion of the research hopes to address the positive and negative effects these policies have in regard to corruption and the home health labor markets.
Shanelle Greenidge
The 2018 Northeastern Conference of Public Administration (NECoPA) was absolutely inspiring and the catalyst I needed to remind me why I am furthering my education. I was nervous about the conference because of the time frame of my presentation on the politics of Offices of Inspector General, the audience, and my fellow student presenters of John Jay College. As an online student, my biggest fear coming into the conference was being isolated from the John Jay College due to a non-existent prior relationship and no one being interested in my research. I was completely wrong. This conference gave me the opportunity to meet people just like me with similar interests and empowered me to continue my research path. We encouraged each other while we practiced our presentations, before we presented in our group text chat, and celebrated a job well done afterward. The amazing thought-provoking and empowering moment occurred when I realized there were students like me that enjoy discourse on political issues and shared the same interests in public administration. I highly recommend students and faculty to partake in future NECoPA events seeking like-minded people.
About the author:
Shanelle Greenidge is a second-year online graduate student at John Jay College, CUNY. She currently works as a Graduate Assistant for Women in the Public Sector (WPS) under the direction of Dr. Maria D’Agostino and Dr. Nicole Elias and as a Research Assistant under the direction of Dr. Robin Kempf, in addition to being a Recruitment Assistant and a volunteer for various organizations. Shanelle hopes to continue her education in advance professional degree programs after she earns her master’s degree in Operation and Management.
Sofia Calsy
NECoPA 2018 Conference in Charm City!
Hi! My name is Sofia Calsy, I live in Georgia, and I am an online student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice pursuing my master’s degree in Public Administration. I most recently attended the North Eastern Conference of Public Administration (NECoPA) in Baltimore, Maryland. This was my first experience attending and presenting at a conference. I have to admit it was such a privilege and I found the whole conference experience to be amazing. I was able to meet peers, colleagues and learn about many issues discussed in the Public Administration field.
Nervousness is an understatement. I was a bundle of nerves before the conference. I was excited about the experience, but there was so much unknown. Being an online student that does not live in New York is sometimes isolating. I never get to attend on-campus activities or have a chance to interact with other students. I didn’t know if the other students on the panel had been to a conference, or if they all knew each other. However, meeting my fellow John Jay peers was one of my favorite parts of the conference. I arrived in Baltimore and later that night the panel of students, and Dr. D’Agostino met each other in the lobby. We introduced ourselves, and each presented our PowerPoint to each other. We provided feedback and comments. I quickly learned everyone was as nervous and excited as I was. We instantly stayed together as a group. That night we made breakfast and dinner plans for the weekend. It was a great start to know that you would not be alone for the weekend.
The next day was Presentation Day! I have been working on a research project with Dr. D’Agostino, the study purpose is to see if public sector leaders are aware of implicit bias in the workplace or aware of their own implicit bias. I built off of this and presented on the lack of women in leadership, implicit bias and the future of public administration. I had this image that I was going to present to 300 people. It was much less, I am a bit dramatic! It was not bad at all, and I prepared and felt like I did well on my presentation. Questions were asked after by Professor Kempf, that was the most nerve-wracking part for me, but again I worked myself up for nothing. She asked fair and thought-provoking questions. If you know the material behind your presentation, you will know how to answer the questions. I think all my peers did an exceptional job and all their presentations were on such relevant topics.
Saturday was a more relaxed, as my presentation was over with, I felt accomplished. Saturday was another day filled with rich and valuable content. I was able to meet and network with many professors from all over the United States. Some of the presentations I attended discussed: Private and public prisons and what detention centers look like in our own country, Hurricane Maria and the United States Federal Government response to natural disasters, Intelligence dilemmas, and the complexity of democracy in Nigeria. The presentations were followed by a very stimulating Q & A session, it made me feel part of an engaged and valued audience. This was a fantastic opportunity that enriched my education by introducing me to new and innovative people and topics that make me excited for the future!
About the author:
My name is Sofia Calsy, and I am a graduate student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. My specialization is human resource and management and operation. My passion is learning, if I could be paid to be a student, I would. My area of interests includes tackling significant issues. My current research interests are gender equity. As a former case manager, I continue to pursue approaches that will help enrich and better the lives of adults and children. I continue to grow and evolve. I look forward to building my career with my gained education from John Jay College.
Uroosa Malik
Attending the NECoPA Conference was one of the best experiences I had in my college journey. Ever since my sophomore year of college, one of my professors told me about the NECoPA conference and encouraged me to attend and present there too and at that very moment, I set a goal for myself to make that happen. A few years had passed, and I always had that goal in the back of my head, however, I never got the chance to actually pursue it until the same professor emailed me to register for the conference and send my proposal in. I took no time in doing so and sent my proposal to present on the #MeToo Movement and Sexual Harassment.
Once the proposal was approved, I knew it was my time to shine. I started preparing my presentation and as time neared, I started to become very nervous. However, I received guidance for professor D’Agostino and fellow panelist which helped me understand the direction of my presentation a whole lot better. Furthermore, as time had neared, the other panelists and I met in Baltimore, Maryland. We all shared our presentations, felt better as to how the actual presentation day would go, and became much more confident. The run through calmed my nerves and I was ready to speak about the most controversial topic in our society today. It was important for me to share my thoughts and my insight on the MeToo Movement and how it impacts thousands of individuals not only in the private sector, but the public sector as well. As a future public administrator, it was important for me to stand up and inform others on the sexual harassment policies, along with Human Resource blind spots which need to be catered towards creating a safe work environment for all.
As the 3rd presenter on the panel, I was able to get all my nerves and thoughts together and mentally prepare myself for my presentation. As it was my turn to present, the next 10 minutes were so impactful and truly unforgettable. I stated all my points in a concise and timely manner and the professors around me were very proud. After we all presented, professor Kempf asked us each a question which I believed I wouldn’t be prepared for. However, after questioning me on my next steps regarding this topic and where I see myself taking it next, I was able to give my thoughts on how it’s important to work with other organizations and understand what works and what doesn’t work regarding sexual harassment policies, while incorporating other mechanisms from other agencies, in order to make a bigger impact for the future. Professor Kempf seemed very proud and stated, “I see your next step as taking over the world!” and at that moment, I knew my goal was truly met and I made the impact I wanted to, as I envisioned for the past 3 years.
About the author:
Uroosa Malik is in her final year in the dual-degree BS/MPA program, studying Public Administration and specializing in Inspection and Oversight at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She has interned with the Department of Correction and CUNY’s Research Foundation, which furthered her interest in serving the public in an effective and efficient manner. In addition, she aspires to explore her horizons and study abroad in the Middle East. Lastly, upon graduation, Uroosa plans on working for the Inspector General’s Office or the Department of Investigation and pursuing a career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The recent summary by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) of research by the Council of Graduate Schools shows great hope for gender equity in the academy. For eight straight years, women earned more graduate degrees than men in the United States. Women earned 52% of the doctorates and 57% of masters degrees. When I was the Research Director at the Council of Graduate Schools we saw the early signs of this trend and excitedly awaited this point.
These trends are hopeful for better gender equity in the professoriate and research. However, three cautions are worth noting. First, gaps in some fields of study persist. Fields like engineering and math remain overwhelmingly male. Men earned nearly three-quarters of doctoral degrees in engineering and mathematics, continuing historic patterns of under-representation of women.
Second, in 2018, our society has come to better recognize that gender identity is more than dichotomous. National data collection should better reflect this reality by providing more disaggregated enrollment and degree data. This won’t be an easy change for institutions with strong traditions and well-established survey design practices. Nevertheless, the time has come for higher education research to make appropriate changes in order to better understand the challenges faced by the trans community in the academy.
Third, and most importantly, the changes in the gender composition of graduate programs has not happened on its own. Concerted efforts by universities and the federal government — such as the ADVANCE program administered by the National Science Foundation — have provided the resources necessary to compel greater equity throughout the academy. The recent book by Duke University professor, Deondra Rose,Citizens By Degree: Higher Education Policy and the Changing Gender Dynamics of American Citizenship(Oxford University Press, 2018) documents the way federal lawmakers have passed major laws since the 1950s, such as federal aid programs and Title IX, to advance women at universities and reduce discrimination. Interesting, Dr. Rose finds that the benefits of these programs are not just found in educational achievement, women’s political participation has also improved notably over the last several decades.
Celebrations are warranted when indicators of progress and equity are found. Yet policy makers and university administrators must remain vigilant to make sure the direction of this trend persists into the future and that fields with continued imbalances are better addressed.
Heath Brown, Associate Professor of Public Policy, John Jay College, CUNY E-mail Address: hbrown@jjay.cuny.edu Twitter: @heathbrown
Heath Brown is an associate professor of public policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and the CUNY Graduate Center. He has worked at the US Congressional Budget Office as a Research Fellow, at the American Bus Association as a Policy Assistant, and at the Council of Graduate Schools as Research and Policy Director.
In addition to his research, Brown is Reviews Editor for Interest Groups & Advocacy and hosts a podcast called New Books in Political Science, www.newbooksinpoliticalscience.com, where he interviews new authors about their political science publications. He is also an expert contributor to The Hill as well as to The Atlantic magazine and American Prospect magazine.
by Dr. Nicole M. Elias and Dr. Maria J. D’Agostino:
On July 3, 2018, we posted our summer blog thread, “Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity in Academia and the Field of Public Administration”. The response we received from journal editors, board members, and leaders in the field was impressive and eye-opening. Throughout the summer our blog contributors reflected on women’s roles in academia, specifically public administration, with the goal of considering next steps and new ways of thinking and taking action to advance women in public administration. Some recommendations include promoting oneself and others, speaking up on behalf of untenured faculty, identifying collaborators, being transparent in selecting journal editors, and citing and including more work published by women in course materials and research.
Patricia Shields, editor of Armed Forces & Society, notes how her perspective as a woman contributed to editorial decisions. She proposes several means to increase the visibility and impact of women’s ideas and scholarship in public administration, including not to be shy and promote our work via conferences and social media. Similarly, Staci Zavattaro, editor of Administrative Theory & Praxis, recommends that we know our worth, be confident and kind as we stay true to ourselves. She also reminds us that we cannot do this alone and suggests to “find your tribe” and make that group of scholars your home and support. In addition to being supportive of female colleagues, and promoting oneself, Carole Jurkiewicz, editor of Public Integrity, offers actions we can take to mitigate organizational and cultural barriers for women. Specifically, she emphasizes the need to advocate for and speaking up on behalf of non tenured female faculty.
Recognizing the “Power in Editorial Positions: A Feminist Critique of Public Administration,” Mary Feeney, incoming editor of Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, Lisa Carson, and Helen Dickson argue that it is time to address the inequity of women in editorial leadership positions and suggest a range of personal, interpersonal, and structural strategies to combat these inequities, including the establishment of transparent search and selection criteria for editorships. Such changes, as highlighted by Hillary Knepper and Gina Scutelnicu in A Tale of Two Journals: Women’s Representation in Public Administration Scholarship, are essential for women’s success in the academy. Knepper, et. al find that women publish less than men, with men producing twice as many peer-reviewed articles as their female counterparts. They recommend that women cite other women’s work to increase visibility and citation counts. Megan Hatch reminds us that inclusion and creating a sense of belonging starts with the MPA curriculum. She suggests that one way to make women feel included in public administration is to include more women authored research in our syllabi. She introduces us to the Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT) developed by Jane Lawrence Sumner to test the gender balance of our syllabi. More resources like the GBAT could remedy some of the challenges our contributors identified throughout the summer blog thread.
So, what comes next? To date, more than sixteen blog participants have contributed to the WPS blog, a forum that was created a year ago to consider the role sex/gender plays in public service and how that shapes the way we think, govern, and are served by sex/gender identities and markers. As we start off the new academic year, we hope to continue the conversation and encourage readers to undertake practices outlined by our guest bloggers. As a first step, WPS, in collaboration with Megan Hatch and Academic Women in Public Administration (AWPA), we will develop a shared database of articles authored by women in in public administration to help facilitate the creation of more inclusive syllabi and research, provide a forum to promote ourselves, and create a supportive community of scholars and practitioners. Our hope is that this blog thread provides a starting point for thinking creatively and taking action toward greater gender equity in academia. Please share any thoughts or feedback with us at wps@jjay.cuny.edu
A large body of research concludes that women pay a high price for choosing academic careers, and that this disparity has changed little over time. Motivated by a desire to add to knowledge and the passion to explore our intellectual interests, we share the same monetary costs as men, but research has emphasized that not only will we be vastly outnumbered in our profession, but more often than not we’ll be ostracized, dismissed, have our ideas discounted, be expected to take over group maintenance activities, receive less travel and research funding, and if we have a partner 98% of the time we’ll end that relationship by year two if that person doesn’t already hold a Ph.D. If we have children before applying, we are likely to be rejected upon the assumption that we’re not seriously committed to the rigors of a doctoral program or academic life.
Nearing graduation, we’re less likely to receive job offers and may be invited to interview only because a faculty group finds us physically attractive, where they’ll stand in the back and comment on our features or their strategy to know us intimately before we head back home. If we are offered a job, 99% of us will receive a much lower salary/benefit package than if we were male.
As a new faculty member,there is a high likelihood that we will face demeaning insults related to gender, such as rape and groping and propositioned by other faculty and students, pressured overtly and covertly to trade sexual favors for promotion and tenure and/or threatened if we don’t oblige. We’ll be subject to harsher assessments of our activity reports, our course evaluations will be much lower than our male counterparts as students believe we should be much more generous with our grading and more understanding of the excuses they have for not meeting class goals, as well as on how closely our appearance matches the desirable features in social media. About 98% of our male counterparts will have fewer service responsibilities, and be invited to lunches, outings, and social activities much more than we, while we’re subject to more requests for “favors” from faculty, administration, and students. We’re less likely to have a spouse or stay-at-home partner to see to daily duties while we pursue our careers, and the men who generally will hold the senior and administrative positions in our department/college/university will view as they do their wives: reportedly subservient, obedient, and viewing our careers as pastime amusements.
Men are more often encouraged to vie for early tenure, more likely to be given visible assignments within the university, given choice GRAs, more travel and research funds, desirable office locations and teaching times, and greater acceptance of our office hours and outside time demands. We’re less likely to hold Chairs, Endowed Professorships, or Dean positions. We’ll be promoted at a slower rate throughout our careers and are likely to never reach pay parity with our male counterparts. Our articles as sole or female first author are less likely to be published. Few of us will be appointed journal editors or members of an editorial board, conference chairs, or book editors.;there has been only one female editor of PAR over its history and she resigned shortly into her tenure as Editor-in-Chief due to bullying and discrimination. Fellow female editors know this all toowell. We are also more likely to leave academia and seek employment elsewhere due to the differential treatment and harassment, and are more likely to be featured on the lower tier and in the center of department photos as token evidence of diversity.
Research on these points and others have been consistent over time and geographic boundaries. As a doctoral student and junior faculty member, I’ve witnessed firsthand the machinations behind inviting in attractive female candidates who had no chance of being hired; have suffered all the sexual assaults mentioned above many times over and told by chairs that I shouldn’t do research with male faculty or wear skirts or dresses as it invites such behavior. Lower evaluations and student/faculty comments that I should grade easier and overlook plagiarism and aggressive acts because I’m a woman, delayed promotions, lower salaries and less discretionary funding, bias because I’m a single parent by choice, being left out of social events because of gender, subject to demeaning remarks based upon gender…I have been subject to it all. Not having anyone as a role model or in whom I could confide, I tolerated a lot, fought back selectively and paid the costs, and have strengthened my determination to use my experiences to enable other talented and ethical women and to try to make their paths less strident and facilitate their successes when I can.
Culture is very difficult to change in any organization, and especially so in an academy setting. It’s exhilarating to see changes over time firsthand, which one hopes is a trend despite recent research that disagrees. What can we do to contribute to equalization in academia, or at least not perpetuate the barriers?
For all genders and gender-identifications:
If the other bodes no ill will, be kind, share best practices you’ve experienced on dealing with the harassment, limitations, and discrimination. Mentor other women, ensure equal social opportunities including sports.
Don’t use the phrase, “excuse my language ladies.” Don’t do or say anything to single out females or any gender-identifiers differently from males.
Don’t comment on clothing or hairstyle unless you routinely do so of everyone.
Appoint, advocate for, or facilitate females as journal editors and on editorial boards.
Stand up for untenured female faculty when you see them harassed. Not privately after the fact but in public at the moment it occurs. Don’t be complicit in setting a precedent for behavior that is inexcusable in any setting.
Familiarize yourself on the gender bias inherent in student evaluations and either advocate for forms that don’t disadvantage females, or follow the research and adjust female evaluations to increase by the margin of bias substantiated by the literature.
Speak up on behalf of women if some are being ignored in committees/groups, as we know usually happens; advocate for them in speaking their voice.
If a woman is ostracized for speaking out about bias or discrimination, don’t avoid them, refuse to participate in groupthink. Talk to them, invite them to activities, don’t tolerate their disparagement, and ensure they remain part of the mainstream. Don’t say they asked for it. It is best to assume that women are never implying an invitation to intimacies; their looking over your shoulder at the computer, inviting you to discuss research over a drink or lunch, or a pat on the back is nothing more than it would be if she were a man.
Provide equal formal and informal consideration for family leave, sick children, single parents, and health issues.
To other women:
Stop the mean girl routine, I’m sure we all know the statistics on how frequently this happens and why. Instead, empower other female doctoral students and faculty. It’s not a zero-sum game and we can all win by teaming up, not by building barriers to protect our fiefdom as lone female among males. Being a mean girl doesn’t identify us as remarkable, but rather shines the spotlight on our petty weaknesses and makes us a target for ridicule and derision.
Don’t refer to female faculty by their first names and men by their titles, ensure equal respect. Don’t assume camaraderie based upon gender, but rather earn it through demonstrating the ideals by which you want to be judged. I think of classic Ms. Magazine articles like, “I Want a Wife,” and “If Men Could Menstruate.” Amplify these voices by refusing to perpetuate stereotypes. Be a role model, speak out and pave the way for other females to address inequities.
These are just a few suggestions, and useful for all regardless of gender, but if we were to achieve even these minor inroads, we would be light-years ahead of where we’ve mired for decades.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24994; Accessed 19 August 2018
Sexual Harassment In the Academy: A Crowdsource Survey. By Dr. Karen Kelsky, of The Professor Is In. Accessed 21 August 2018, www.theprofessorisin.com.
Today, women in the public administration discipline strive for representation in the academy alongside men, but equitable gender representation remains elusive. Women in the social sciences earn more Ph.D. degrees than men (51.4% in 2014), but fill only 41% of positions in academia (National Science Foundation, 2015). In public administration 50.7% of women were awarded Ph.D. degrees in 2014 (NSF, 2015) but only 38% of women hold academic positions (Feeney, 2015). In moving from Assistant to Full Professor, women lag behind despite their increasing presence at the rank of Assistant Professor (Hancock et al., 2013; Sabharwal, 2013). For the social sciences, NSF (2015) reports that Assistant Professors are 49.5 % women, while at the Full Professor level they represent only 26.6% of the faculty.
While women are more likely now than in the past to obtain their Ph.D. degrees in public administration and related fields, as well as securing academic positions, they somehow do not advance as quickly as their male counterparts. In spite of the fact that some extant studies address the topic of women’s representation in public administration (Hancock, Baum, & Breuning, 2013; Feeney, 2015; D’Agostino, 2016; Scutelnicu & Knepper, 2018), as indicated by D’Agostino and Elias in their blog introduction:“Big Questions Surrounding Gender Equity in Academia and the Field of Public Administration”, little has been written about explaining why women are not advancing in their academic careers as quickly as men.
Some progress has been made to explore the context of women’s advancement. Existing evidence suggests that underrepresentation of women authors may be explained by a working institutional climate that is not welcoming to women (Hancock et al., 2013), an inadequate work-life balance (Mason & Goulden, 2004), and the fact that women place a higher priority than do men on student advising and nurturing (Park, 1996). Why is the presence of women in academia decreasing as they move up the academic career path from Assistant to Full Professor? We will share, through this blog, our views about three explanatory key indicators that are critical for women’s success in the academy: research productivity,institutional climateand work-life balance. Our foundation for these key indicators lies in our recent research in Public Integrity, “A Tale of Two Journals: Women’s Representation in Public Administration Scholarship.” These key indicators are emerging from our research currently underway as well as from personal communications with peers in the field of public administration and our own experiences. Here, we offer some helpful tips on how women can be more successful in their academic advancement.
Research productivity is one of the most important factors that can contribute to the success of women’s academic advancement in public administration. As evidenced in the literature (Scutelnicu & Knepper, 2018) women publish less than men, so finding ways to encourage and support more publishing is critical.Research productivityrefers mainly to the number of peer-reviewed publications (such as peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and books) one faculty produces and the impact of such published work. Other types of publications such as non-peer reviewed articles, book reviews, research reports and the like rarely count toward research productivity. In a recent 2018 PA Times article we presented some preliminary findings of a self-reported survey sent out to faculty affiliated with NASPAA accredited programs. We found that, overall, women publish on average at 57% of men’s publishing rates. When we examined differences between women and men by types of publications, we found that men publish almost twice as many peer-reviewed articles and books than women and slightly more book chapters. Women seem to publish slightly more non-peer reviewed articles and book reviews than men. Moreover, research reports are favored more by men than by women. Notably, women seem to be most productive at the Associate Professor level and least productive at the Assistant Professorlevel especially in terms of peer-review articles.
Why does this matter? If, typically, faculty performance and success is perceived as synonymous with productivity and evaluated through the assessment of the three academic pillars of teaching, research and service, existing research indicates that, among the three, research productivity is the one that matters the most mainly because it has the potential to lead to an increase in institutional prestige (Coggburn & Neely, 2015; Youn & Price, 2009). In the past five to ten years we have witnessed a higher education trend that places an increasing importance on research productivity for the process of tenure and promotion (Youn & Price, 2009) not only for research-intensive higher education institutions but also for those focused primarily on teaching. The public administration discipline is not exempt from this trend. Therefore, the types of publications that matter the most in the process of faculty tenure and promotion are the peer-reviewed work, precisely where women are less productive than men, at least in the early stages of their careers.
Institutional climate is a comprehensive term that we equate with institutional support, work environment and expectations. Common sense incentives such as reduced teaching load, research stipends, financial support for conference travel and support for grants are all part of creating a research supportive climate. Further, having the necessary staff support to identify and apply for federal, state, local grants and foundation money is equally important. We have witnessed instances where women are expected to identify a grant, write the proposal, and compete on par with peers at institutions with knowledgeable staff support throughout the process. Further, having sponsored research staff with expertise in the social sciences, will increase the capacity of institutions to support public administration researchers.
Work-life balance is another key indicator of women’s success and advancement in the academy. Our preliminary research suggests that women who have supportive partners tend to become successful academics and those who have young children tend to be less successful, especially during tenure-track years. We consider tenure clock stoppage as an indicator of academic success that all academic women should take advantage of. In a 2016 New York Times article Wolfers mentions that male faculty actually take advantage of this policy and it works in their favor more often than it works for female faculty. While it seems common sense for every university to offer such a benefit to its employees, in reality not all institutions provide such support. Our workplace is an example that instituted such support in the last 5 to 10 years. Working in a male dominated environment may prove to be hostile for women, especially to those who have recently welcomed children or who are caring for aging or disabled relatives.
So, how can women narrow the research productivity gap? We’ve identified some useful tips:
Attend more conference presentations and seek out feedback to best prepare our manuscripts for the peer-review process.
Co-present and co-author with graduate students by serving on dissertation committees and masters’ theses. This is an especially important research mentoring part for the next generation.
Stay focused on “what matters”in terms of being successful in academia (e.g. research productivity) by dedicating more time to conducting and publishing peer-reviewed research.
Embrace constructive criticism and build a thick skin for non-constructive criticism. We believe women tend to struggle more than men with accepting constructive criticism, an important part of the peer-review process. Women often won’t send manuscripts for review unless they consider them fully polished.
Women must be sure to cite other women’s work. This builds our citation counts and visibility.
Find alternative and creative ways to show the impact of one’s scholarship work. Before Google Scholar, Academia.edu, Research Gate and the like, measuring the impact of academic work was limited to certain journals that were listed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) database. However, today, women can identify other women’s work, cite it in their research and use it in the classes they teach by using Google Scholar, Mendeley and other academic social networks such as Academia.edu, Research Gate etc. All these digital tools have served to equalize access to faculty research even in the working stages. Through these networks we believe the impact of women’s academic work has become more recognized, and can continue to become even more so than it has ever been.
Learn to say “no”. Historically, being in a tenure-track position gives you little leverage to refuse new tasks and projects that you are asked to do and women seem to have a harder time at negotiating these workloads. It is perfectly acceptable to politely say no. Institutions must create safe ways to enable academics to decline non-research based additional work activities – perhaps accepting new tasks by letting go of others.·
Find mentors, build formal mentoring programs, and become better mentors. Mentoring should be institutionalized with both formal and informal mentoring taking place from day one. Notably, those universities that provide formal mentoring programs that align with NSF’s Advance grant have seen women successfully mentored, resulting in funded research. We anticipate that women junior faculty who land in institutions with a history of strong mentoring through research collaboration with senior faculty members are well positioned to not only succeed in their own research but are then better positioned to mentor junior faculty down the road.
We love and embrace the new wave of research in the area of gender representation in public administration and we think it is timely. While public administration academe has seen greater equity in terms of gender representation lately, it remains critically lacking in terms of other types of diversity such as race, ethnicity etc. Much work remains to be done.
By: Gina Scutelnicu, Assistant Professor Hillary J. Knepper, Chair and Associate Professor Rebecca Tekula, Assistant Professor Pace University, Department of Public Administration
By Staci M. Zavattaro, University of Central Florida:
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.
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 othershavesuggestionsas 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.
By Mary Feeney & Helen Dickinson, Arizona State University:
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.
By 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.
