Introduction

The last decade of the 20th century, which was marked by a great transformation in various fields of
science and social sciences such as sociology, economics, demography and anthropology seemed to
have found a new direction with social equality issues of men and women as the centre of attention.
Likewise, public administration too has come to be redefined in the light of feminist exploration of the
subject resulting in expansions of its boundaries and reassessment of its norms.

Feminism is a methodology of investigation. It is more likely a theoretical method trying to explain/ re-
describe the reality. When we talk of feminist perspective of public administration, three factors
become pertinent: first, inclusion of women-friendly policies in governance; second, participation of
women in public administration and third, a change of attitude to gender question in administration.

1.Gender lacuna in the discipline : Feminist Perspective

From time immemorial, women have always been excluded from public affairs owing to gendered
public-private dichotomy, formulated and engendered by a patriarchal society. This excluded females
and feminist attributes from the public administration, right from the beginning, confining their realm
only to private domain.

Public organisation contributes to and is sustained by Patriarchy, male domination, and gender power
relations at home, family, and society at Large. In policy formulation and implementation issues of
women are either not counted or Given much lesser weight. The problems concerning women are
looked from males’ Perspective, which obstruct identification and solution of women’s problems.
Public Administration adopts paternalistic approach to women’s problem. In formulation of public
Policy related to women’s problem, gender bias is overtly visible. Even the concepts of expertise,
leadership, virtue of individual public administrator have a heterosexist bias.

1.1 Gender of governance

A mere glance at the history of social sciences would reveal that all over the world, the public political
domain has been, and continues to be defined and controlled by men. Male dominance/ patriarchy is
considered to be normal, neutral and universal. Women have been as Sheila Rowbotham (1973) has
put it, 'hidden from history'. Concerned about the absence of women from established political
structures, feminist scholars have tried to account for this phenomenon.

The central mechanism by which this exclusion is realised is the assumption of a natural separation
between the public and the private (Squires, 1999). It is assumed that the political is public and an
arena of men ,and that the private realm of the domestic, of familial and sexual relations, sphere
reserved for women lies outside the proper concern of the study of politics. Women are, by and large,
being excluded from defining their activities as political.

Feminist theory in the latter half of the 20th century began to realise how potent this duality was for
the ways in which male and female roles are constructed and the means by which women, from the
very understanding of what is 'political' may be excluded .Thus, began a re-evaluation of many male-
created theories, principles, concepts and institutions including those of politics and administration.
By claiming that 'the personal is the political' they challenged the traditional views on family and
personal life as outside the remit of 'politics' and argued that the private sphere was in fact a primary
site of power relations and of gendered inequality. They emphasised the way in which personal
circumstances are structured by public factors.

The essence of their argument is that gender is about power. Through gender relations, people
recreate and reinforce the distinction between masculinity and feminity. Gender also organises power
at the level of complex institutions. It saturates different spaces - even the Administrative State. In
public administration , the ‘administrative man’ is naturally considered a man and not a woman.

1.2 Governance of Gender

The Feminist writers not only expose the male bias of the Administrative State; they also assess the
effect of such an Administrative State and its policies on men and women. They try to show that an
Administrative State, which is a gendered hierarchy produces inequality and assigns different life
chances to men and women and reinforces material realities that oppress women. A Feminist
Approach to public administration includes calling those shaded boundaries into question that
differentiate capabilities/ potential qualities on the basis of gender, giving preference to males over
females. It also means exploring the implications of these attitudes in governance.

This becomes apparent when we see that the conventional understanding of public administration is
rooted in the images of expertise, leadership and a form of virtue which can be identified as culturally
masculine (although, of course this masculinity is not overtly acknowledged). This peculiar nature of
the public - organisational reality where links are drawn between ideas of masculinity and public
administration norms of professionalism, leadership and neutrality; where working women bear the
double burden of housework and paid employment; are relegated to lower bureaucratic ranks; and a
glass ceiling blocks their access to the position of greatest power and monitory reward are declared
misfit with organisational expectations about professional and managerial behaviour, harms women
and restricts their political and social freedom.Such a culturally dominant masculine modes of
thought and action privilege men and their interests by establishing boundaries that exclude all but a
few exceptional women from positions of authority. A Feminist Approach to public administration
theory entails questioning of these boundaries.

2. Feminist reconfiguration of Public Administration

The feminists, argue that true cannot be achieved by just 'adding in' women to traditional theories, but
that the very basis of the theories must be challenged. Accordingly, they examine and analyse several
issue areas in public administration that call for a new configuration and offer a new version of the
spectrum of the feminist opinion, which promises to be fruitful in shaping administrative theory and
practice.

2.1 EXPERTISE : Feminist theorists have drawn upon and contributed to the debates about the image
 of expertise in public administration. Classical public administration grounded in politics-
administration dichotomy was based on the assumption that public administration was legitimate
because it was manned by expert professionals. The Wilsonian -Weberian model of professional
expertise with an implicit emphasis on objectivity, assertion of autonomy and hierarchy is considered
inconsistent with the widely accepted notions of womanhood.

The conventional idea of expertise also privileges a notion of autonomy over and above the public
servant's obligation to be politically responsive. From the Feminist Perspective, such ideas of
expertise block connectivity and affiliation of the administrator with the world around him. They not
only separate the individual from the field, but they also raise the administrator above the field.
Professional competence reduces those over whom authority is exercised.

The recognition that the perspectives of all the parties to the situation - clients, citizens, workers are
important in ascertaining genuine public interest, made the feminists campaign for a form of
professional competence that is non- hierarchical. From the Feminist Perspective, the legitimate
public administrator will be a whole person, one who is understood to have developed in and to be a
continuing member of a family; the work of agencies will be seen as supporting and supported by the
wider dimensions of its member's lives, and agency personnel policies will reflect this understanding.

2.2 LEADERSHIP: Although the feminists are disturbed by the fact that only a very small percentage of
top jobs in business and public administration are held by women in most countries, they are not sure,
if simply adding women in key positions will be enough to bring. about so fundamental a change. They
also want to raise another pertinent question; whether we need leaders at all. Conventional
administrative theory sees hierarchy as the inevitable 'given'. Feminists like Stivers, however, see the
perceived need for leadership as a function of hierarchy, which socialises those in lower ranks to
believe that they are incapable of taking decisions. Widespread dissatisfaction with hierarchy and
control, led women organisations to experiment with non- hierarchical forms of Feminist Approach
organising, which is a more participatory, flexible, group-oriented style of management.

The feminists are not arguing that all women are interactive leaders or that it excludes men. The
feminists simply want a shift in the norms of leadership such that feminist leadership is viewed as a
compliment, not as a replacement to traditional leadership.

2.3 VIRTUE : From a feminist perspective, the idea of virtue will remain problematic long as the
dependence of the public sphere on the domestic sphere & the sexual division of labor that goes with
it-continues unacknowledged. Public virtue involves a reuniting of masculinity and feminity. Unless
we are able to approach the project of promoting the virtue of public administrators in light of that
assumption, we will continue to struggle with the apparent "weakness" of virtue: It will continue to
seem soft, sentimental, or (most damning of all) unrealistic.

Of all the current images of the virtuous public administrator, the idea of the administrator-as-citizen
comes closest to an understanding consistent with a feminist perspective; moving from Cooper's idea
of administrators as"citizen for the rest of us" to "citizen with the rest of us." Based on such a vision,
public administrators deserve our approbation not because they understand the public interest better
than the rest of us but because they are willing to bear more of the burden of facilitating its
accomplishment. As facilitators, their role is to make the governance process as inclusive as
possible, particularly of those whose interests and needs are poorly represented in interest group
politicsTo fulfill this role, the administrator-as-citizen sees herself or himself as "partner with" rather
than "guardian over" or "citizen for".

A domestic image that might reunite public and private images of virtue is Ruddick's (1989) idea of
motherhood as "fostering growth," or "nurturing a child's developing spirit." Thus we have a maternal
image that matches in many ways the lives and responsibilities of virtuous public administrators: Like
mothers, they must foster growth under conditions of complexity; like mothers, they must perform
both routine and rewarding work in the interest of others who are in a sense their responsibility; like
mothers, they must both hold close (conserve administrative resources and capacities) and welcome
change; just as mothers see their children as agents of their own lives, so must public administrators
see citizens in the same light.

The general emphasis in the feminist perspective is on horizontal rather than vertical relations: on
seeing oneself as reaching across rather "than down, on seeing others as respected equals rather
than threats to "one's own autonomy or sheep in need of herding. This perspective also entails viewing
the conceptual division between public and domestic spheres as permeable and mutually supportive.
Awareness of the mutuality of public and domestic spheres should lead us to demand equal sharing
of the work in the two sectors by men and women, thus to understandings of them (sectors and sexes)
as equally important. As long as public administrators assert their rightful share in ruling a special
public sphere that depends on but denigrates the domestic, they will be laying claim to a sphere that
puts women in their place and thus perpetuating a weak understanding of virtue.

Conclusion : an alternative organisational theory by feminists

The feminist position on the above mentioned themes raises questions that bear directly on
organisation theory. The feminists are developing alternative models of organisation, based primarily
on their experience in the women's movement. They are experimenting with new patterns of group
activity, which substantially depart from the rational model of administration. They also challenge
domination by superior through hierarchical patterns on the grounds that it restricts the growth of
individual members. They propose the adoption of fluid, temporary, more flexible and egalitarian
forms of organisation. The potential impact of the feminist critique of the key concepts in public
administration prompted Robert Denhardt and Jan Powell to predict the demise of 'the administrative
man' and urge the adoption of an alternative model based on the organisational values of women's
movement.