Who Does What Work in a Ministerial Office: Politically Appointed Staff and the Descriptive Representation of Women in Australian Political Offices, 1979–2010
| Author | Marija Taflaga,Matthew Kerby |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321719853459 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719853459
Political Studies
2020, Vol. 68(2) 463 –485
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321719853459
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Who Does What Work in a
Ministerial Office: Politically
Appointed Staff and the
Descriptive Representation of
Women in Australian Political
Offices, 1979–2010
Marija Taflaga and Matthew Kerby
Abstract
Women are underrepresented within political institutions, which can (negatively) impact policy
outcomes. We examine women’s descriptive representation as politically appointed staff within
ministerial offices. Politically appointed staff are now institutionalised into the policy process,
so who they are is important. To date, collecting systematic data on political staff has proved
impossible. However, for the first time we demonstrate how to build a systematic data set of
this previously unobservable population. We use Australian Ministerial Directories (telephone
records) from 1979 to 2010 (a method that can notionally be replicated in advanced democratic
jurisdictions), to examine political advising careers in a similar manner as elected political elites.
We find that work in political offices is divided on gender lines: men undertake more policy work,
begin and end their careers in higher status roles and experience greater career progression than
women. We find evidence that this negatively impacts women’s representation and their later
career paths into parliament.
Keywords
political staff, political advisers, gender, professionalisation of politics, political elites, descriptive
representation
Accepted: 3 May 2019
Women remain under represented in parliaments across the Western world (Inter-
Parliamentary Union, 2018). Women’s presence – or lack thereof – in political offices has
important implications for policy outcomes (Bratton, 2002; Diaz, 2005; Sawer, 2012;
Swers, 2002; Wängnerud, 2000), representation in parliament (O’Brien and Piscopo,
The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Corresponding author:
Marija Taflaga, 178 Haydon Allen Building (#22), The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601,
Australia.
Email: marija.taflaga@anu.edu.au
853459PSX0010.1177/0032321719853459Political StudiesTaaga and Kerby
research-article2019
Article
464 Political Studies 68(2)
2018) and the policy preferences of parties (Greene and O’Brien, 2016). The extent of
women’s descriptive representation in political institutions raises important, but under-
studied, implications for political decision-making and policy outcomes. In this article,
we examine women’s descriptive representation among politically appointed staff in
Australian political offices. Political appointees are now considered an institutionalised
‘third’ pillar of executive governance (Maley, 2015), and policy actors in their own right.
If staff play important roles in policy generation, development, consultation and imple-
mentation, who they are, their experiences and prejudices matter for policy outcomes.
Given growing evidence of the links between partisan experience and candidate selection
there are downstream implications for women’s representation within legislatures (Verge
and Claveria, 2016).
This article contributes to the emerging research agenda on politically appointed staff
backgrounds and their career pathways (Howlett et al., 2017; Maley, 2017; Van den Berg,
2018; Wilson, 2015; Yong and Hazell, 2014). To date, much of what we know about
politically appointed staff has emerged from case study and survey research. However,
we lack longitudinal understandings of how labour is divided within political offices.
This information is essential to understanding how work and the division of labour in a
partisan office affects and influences elected political elites and the decisions they make.
Despite several calls for increased theorisation around political staff (Craft, 2015; Hustedt
et al., 2017; Shaw and Eichbaum, 2015; Van den Berg, 2017), one of the barriers stalling
theorisation is the difficulty of obtaining useful comparative data because of the differ-
ences in work roles and political institutions across regimes. Longitudinal data on politi-
cally appointed staff are difficult to obtain: staff work primarily ‘in the shadows’, with
many governments reluctant to publicly disclose the numbers of paid partisan support
workers employed and reporting and transparency regimes are inconsistent around the
world (Shaw and Eichbaum, 2018).
For the first time, we collate the largest and most comprehensive data set of political
staff in a single political system using historical telephone directories (1979–2010) from
the Australian Federal Parliament. The directories reveal the entire personnel architecture
of ministerial offices, from the typist to the chief of staff (CoS). Using quantitative
sequence analysis and qualitative evidence, we examine whether there are systematic
gendered divisions of labour within political offices.
The results of our empirical analysis demonstrate the gendered division of labour
within ministerial offices between 1979 and 2010. This division manifested itself with
respect to work roles and status undertaken by men and women, and also in differing
career trajectories, despite significant gains across all areas of work. Finally, we demon-
strate the utility of using systematic longitudinal data to examine the career paths of
political advisers, in the absence of detailed biographical data.
Politically Appointed Staff: Roles and Responsibilities
Political scientists have long been interested in the career backgrounds of bureaucratic
elites and how this shapes governance, particularly, in relation to politicisation (Lewis,
2010; Page and Wright, 1999; Theakston and Fry, 1989). This issue has come into sharper
focus as ministers have demanded more political responsiveness from the bureaucracy. In
turn, this has spurred research into the relationship between the characteristics of senior
bureaucrats, their promotion, tenure and political responsiveness (Bach and Veit, 2018;
Boyne et al., 2010; Christensen and Opstrup, 2017; Ennser-Jedenastik, 2016; Petrovsky
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