A GENDER ANALYSIS OF WOMEN IN PUBLIC–PRIVATE–VOLUNTARY SECTOR ‘PARTNERSHIPS’
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12288 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Author | KAREN JOHNSTON |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12288
A GENDER ANALYSIS OF WOMEN IN
PUBLIC–PRIVATE–VOLUNTARY SECTOR
‘PARTNERSHIPS’
KAREN JOHNSTON
The nature of work and traditional notions of the public sector have been changing with increas-
ing collaborative governance and delivery of public services among public, private and voluntary
sector organizations. In the UK, governments at national and devolved levels of government have
adopted collaborative governance for service delivery through various networks and partnerships.
This article explores collaborative governance froma gender perspective, specically the perceptions
of women in public–private–voluntary sector partnerships. While previous research in this area has
explored aspects of collaborative governance such as power, trust, accountability, decision-making,
performance, exchange of information and participation, there is very little research on women
within these networks. The article therefore provides a gendered analysis, disaggregating survey
data to better understand the dynamics, for women, of collaborative governance and partnerships
among public, private and voluntary sector organizations.
INTRODUCTION
During the 1980s and 1990s there was a gradual shift from bureaucratic, hierarchical con-
trol and command public service delivery to markets, with scholars describing this as New
Public Management (Hood 1991; Massey and Pyper 2005). Recently, we have been able to
observe more collaborative forms of service delivery through a combination of public,
private and voluntary sector organizations. Public service delivery through collaboration
is now so pervasive that O’Flynn (2009) argues there is a ‘cult of collaboration’. Schol-
arly debate has followed suit with myriad terms for collaboration such as partnerships,
co-governance, co-production, co-design, co-implementation, network governance, hori-
zontal governance, etc. (see Carey and Dickinson 2015; Voorberg et al. 2015). According to
Cornforth et al. (2015), collaborative governance is a formalized, joint working arrange-
ment between organizations that remain legally autonomous while engaging in ongo-
ing, coordinated collective action to achieve outcomes that none would have achieved
independently. The denitions cover the spectrum of ‘working together’ (see Keast and
Mandell 2012) with a variety of co-productivities and partnership working among gov-
ernmental and non-governmental sectors.
Scholars often employ network, resource dependency and institutional persepectives
to explain collaborative organizational relations (Sowa 2009). Network theorists argue
that trust, reciprocity, level of interdependence, shared norms, power, and leadership are
important factors for successful inter-organizational working (Gazley 2010). Resource
dependency theorists argue that collaboration stems from environmental constraints
(Gazley 2010). In other words, there is a need to secure resources to ensure that uncer-
tainty and risk is reduced through collective inter-organizational working and sharing
of resources (Gazley 2010). Institutional theorists argue that collaboration stems from
the need to develop shared response to problems and sustain the organization (Gazley
2010). However, there is seldom a gender persective of collaborative governance. Carey
Karen Johnston is at the Department of Organisational Studies and Human Resource Management, University of
Portsmouth, UK.
Public Administration Vol.95, No. 1, 2017 (140–159)
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
GENDER ANALYSIS OF PARTNERSHIPS 141
and Dickinson (2015), in their review of research of gender in public administration, note
a lack of attention paid to the issue and call for research in this area, particularly with
emerging discourse of greater inter-organizational working in an increasingly pluralist
state. This article will address the scholarly decit and argue that collaborative gover-
nance, far from being collaborative, reinforces gender roles and patterns of behaviour
through institutional isomorphism.
A GENDER PERSPECTIVE
Although there are various explanations for the under-employment and under-
representation of women and paucity of female careers, much of the under-valuing
of women in organizations can be traced to prejudicial sex-type roles assigned during
socialization (Nicholson 1996). The social construction of male and female as biological
sex categories results in gender categorizations of masculine and feminine in society
(Nicholson 1996). Gender is the way in which society organizes lives in predictable
patterns of behaviour such as division of labour (e.g. men being in paid employment as
the provider and women as domestic carers), designation of resources, roles in public
and private spheres, and norms (Lorber and Farrell 1991). Societal norms stratify male
and female roles with men playing a more dominant role with resultant patriarchy
(Walby 1989). Gender relations are power relations through which masculine norms
have superordinate status over feminine norms, and socialization into gender roles is
integral to the maintenance of patriarchal power structures (Nicolson 1996). Patriarchy
and gender norms are present in organizations as a microcosm of society. Organizations
are structured along gender norms with practices and policies that perpetuate unequal
power, rewards, opportunities and interpersonal interactions that conrm and re-create
gendered patterns of behaviour (Acker 1998).
In society and organizations the sexual division of labour results in men being associated
with power, reason and gendered masculine norms such as dominance and assertive-
ness (Duest-Lahti and Kelly 1995). Men are therefore associated with masculism; in the
sexual division of labour they are associated with ‘power duties’, and they benet from
more social power than females (Duest-Lahti and Kelly 1995). Women, socialized as femi-
nine, are stereotyped as caring, unassertive, interested in appearance, dependent, illogical,
and domestically focused (Nicolson 1996). The manifestations of masculine and femi-
nine norms in organizations result in men being considered more suitable for managerial
and leadership positions; positions of power. Rank in organizational hierarchies inu-
ences ideas of leadership with men occupying senior levels, displaying masculine qual-
ities (Eagly and Carli 2007). Male managers and leaders consider agentic traits such as
assertiveness, competitiveness, drive, decisivenesss, achievement and action orientation
to be requirements for success (Eagly and Carli 2007).
By contrast, women face prejudice which ows from the mismatch of the social con-
truction of femininity where women are expected to be nurturing, caring, communicative,
‘soft’, nice, kind and emotional (Eagly and Carli 2007). Thus, women are often perceived to
have emotional intelligence, and to be empathetic, cooperative and interdependent (Eagly
and Carli 2007). Women who display masculine norms often face sanctions and discrim-
ination from those within organizations (Duest-Lahti and Kelly 1995; Rhode 2003; Eagly
and Carli 2007). Thus, the path to managerial and leadership positions traverses gender
norms, and women often face a fraught trajectory to reach senior levels in organizational
hierarchies. This is commonly referred to as the ‘glass ceiling’, with a vertical occupational
Public Administration Vol.95, No. 1, 2017 (140–159)
© 2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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