Tag: feminism

Beyond Representation: Exploring the Credibility Gap in Public Service

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More women voting on our legislation is critical—but what about the power of us women already working in politics?

This article appeared in MsMagazine.com on August 8, 2017.

She Should Run, a non-partisan organization working to funnel more women into politics, has launched a campaign for political parity—with a goal of women comprising 50 percent of U.S. elected offices by 2030. Donald Trump’s presidential election has prompted a surge of feminist resistance and a commitment to gender equality in politics—and a 1,000 percent increase in women interested in running for office.

More women voting on our legislation is critical—but what about the power of us women already working in politics?

We civil servants, we pencil pushers working in the municipal, state and federal government—we are the ones who write, finance and implement every single one of your local, state and federal policies and budgets. We can make progress and change very difficult for our elected leaders, as Trump has found out from James Comey and Sally Yates. 

And when we are women, we face a unique challenge: a credibility barrier.

Women are already 43 percent of public servants, yet 68 percent of us are the lowest levels of the civil service. While the media is interested in Ivanka Trump for political reasons, most women in unelected government jobs are rarely heard in policy debates despite our expertise. We don’t have the platform and unearned credibility with government officials and politicians that Ivanka enjoys—or the $74 million and glossy hair. We have mom hair and wrinkles. We wear sneakers to work and carry our lunches in cloth shopping bags. We are exhausted from years of repeating our knowledge over and over again to the men we work with and for, hoping to be heard before we turn shrill or apathetic or decide to simply stay home.

Interruption is one way men in the public service damage women’s credibility in politics. Elected officials like Kamala Harris know this all too well. And just this year, a study by Northwestern Law School found that male Supreme Court justices interrupt female justices three times more than each other. “Yet even though Supreme Court justices are some of the most powerful individuals in the country,” the authors wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “justices find themselves consistently interrupted not only by their male colleagues but also by their subordinates: the male advocates who are attempting to persuade them.” If these top-ranking women in public service still fight to be heard by their male peers, then you can imagine the experience of us lower-ranked plebes.

But being interrupted is just one example of the extra work and energy women must exert to influence outcomes in the public service. I have spent too much time trying to communicate with male colleagues about basic elements of their jobs. Over the years, I frequently found myself playing PA to a number of male colleagues despite being equal partners on a committee or in a program. Public services and protections are critical for our most underrepresented citizens—often vulnerable women and children. I sent texts to a police inspector to remind him of meetings, made reminder phone calls to the town manager’s clerical staff, tracked down the housing director before work and prepped health officials in advance of meetings. I have never had to brief my female colleagues to ensure they are ready for a meeting, presentation or deadline.

Since public employees are banned from political activity and communication with the press, constituents or elected officials about internal operations, our experiences have a limited audience. One of the few books on the subject is Women and Public Service: Barriers, Challenges and Opportunities, published in 2014 and authored by Mohamad Alkadry and Leslie Tower. Their findings rather depressingly mirror my personal experience: They argue that the gender inequality in the public sector is a good research example of the cultural barriers facing women because female civil servants are there in equal numbers to start with. The sexism we face is not a pipelines issue, as in the legislature.

The segregation of women to clerical and administrative grades can’t be ignored when identifying causes of gender inequality. In looking at all federal government employees by level, Alkadry and Landry found women represented half the overall workforce but only 30 percent of the Senior Executive Service level. Women consistently outnumber men in positions below GS10, while men outnumber women consistently in positions above GS10. Women also face more barriers to career advancement—and when they do reach the same official level as men, they have less authority, smaller budgets and fewer staff.

Many factors influence our credibility—experience, knowledge and association among them—and often they should. Credibility is earned. Credibility is a survival tool. We all need it to be fairly represented in our legal, economic and political systems. But the notion of credibility isn’t immune from biases stemming from race, gender and class.

I am sick of imagining the impact women could make on our political system if they didn’t spend so much time and energy fighting to be heard. If privileged and educated women like me struggle to have a credible voice, how far are we from real gender equality? My experience in public service, here and abroad, makes me wonder whether whether equal representation will afford women equal credibility and authority in law-making.equal representation will afford women equal credibility and authority in law-making.

Thank you to @theOpEdProject for inspiration and editing advice!

 

The Civil Service Girls

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When do you stop being a ‘girl’? It seems to me that if you work in the public sector in Ireland, than you will be a ‘girl in the office’ until retirement. Is this sexist or just a another cultural difference that I don’t quite understand? While it doesn’t seem to bother anyone particularly but me to hear grown working women referred solely to ‘the girls’ or ‘the girl, I can’t help feeling it represents a systemic disrespect in the Council that I worked in that goes beyond language.  Now this would certainly not the first time that I would be accused of taking things too seriously and making too big a deal out of equality stuff so I am open to the possibility that I am simply missing the intent.

So who is a girl and who is a non-girl? I would hope as a non-girl, that I’ve reached woman status but I suspect there could be other less endearing ways to refer to us non-girls!

Do you have to be young, sweet and single to be a girl? No, doesn’t appear to be any correlation to age, temperament nor marital status.

You can be a bitter, frumpy, 45 year old with a man’s haircut and a mustache and still be a girl if you sit at a certain desk usually surrounded by other ‘girls’. In fact, it took me a while not to laugh when I heard some women referred to as girls because they were so far beyond being girls it seemed ludicrous to pretend otherwise.

Is it a sign of affection and endearment used by men for women they’ve worked with for years? Possibly. Is it just common Irish slang, like referring to men of any age in certain contexts as lads? Possibly but I don’t ever hear anyone referring to a meeting of the Senior Management Team or Directors as ‘the lads are meeting in the conference room’ so it seems to have more significance than simply being an expression although that is the preferred explanation when pressed.  Most commonly men and women are referring to ‘the girls in the front office’ or ‘the girl at reception’ who they are offering up to provide some admin or secretarial support or make tea and coffee.  The context is what makes the language sexist.

These positions and employees are always women. It is hard to compare how a man would be treated in a similar role because simply there appear to be no men in clerical roles. They are just so good at administrative and clerical tasks that they fly through the grades and receive promotion after promotion despite that fact that I’ve worked with numerous life long civil servants who couldn’t’[t write a letter or even seem to type and have zero phone skills. Hmm?

A clerical officer once asked me “Don’t you have someone who does all this for you?” referring to sending emails, making phone calls, updating outlook calendars, and reminding her boss to ring or meet people. I couldn’t help laugh and replied “I don’t know any woman who doesn’t do all that stuff herself and come to think about it, I don’t know one man who does.”

I hope this culture is simply just the leftover sexism from an all around out-dated and unfit for purpose Irish public sector.  Is everyone a ‘girl’ in the private sector? Is the American civil service any different? Or am I just an uptight Yank missing the point?