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The "glass ceiling" model of gender equity has its weaknesses. Therefore, a multiple-dimensions approach to gender is proposed. This essay reports on a field study of organizational gender arrangements in 10 public sector worksites in New South Wales, Australia. Despite equal opportunity measures, gender divisions of labor persist in several forms. Processes that sustain and undermine these divisions are identified. Authority patterns are being reconfigured, with restructuring and rising numbers of women in management resulting in local turbulence in gender relations. Emotions of gender transition are identified, with considerable diversity in reactions among men. An emerging pattern, the "depolarized workplace," is described. A cultural trend toward workplace gender neutrality is observable. Proposals are made for better practice in gender equity work, including richer ways for public organizations to study their own gender regimes.
Gender equality is now a widely accepted goal in public administration. In pursuing this goal, an important requirement is to understand the gender arrangements of public sector organizations. We need an approach that is informed by modern research on gender and helpful for policy and practice. In this article, I propose such an approach, illustrated by a field study of public sector agencies.
The principle of equal rights for women and men is now embedded in international law (e.g., in the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) and in common administrative practices, such as equal opportunity procedures in promotion and appointment. This principle was articulated and these practices adopted to transform an old pattern of inequality. As Stivers (2002) has shown in classic style, the U.S. administrative state, though using women's labor and shaped by women's reform politics, historically excluded women from authority. The same has been true in other countries and in global arenas.
Since the 1970s, the "glass ceiling" has been persistently challenged by a range of equal opportunity and antidiscrimination measures. One of the main goals of Western feminism has been to open the top levels of public administration and politics to women, and progress on this count has become the most visible symbol of gender reform across society. Change has certainly occurred, but the results have been modest. A decade ago, Hale (1996) lamented the slow progress toward equality in the United States,...