Bureaucratic Complexity and Women’s Managerial Attainment: The Case of the Public Sector in Uruguay

RODRÍGUEZ GUSTÁ, ANA LAURA

Penn Economic & Organizational Sociology. Working Paper Series

Penn Economic Sociology & Organizational Studies Group (PESOS). University of Pennsylvania

Lugar: Pennsylvania; Año: 2002 vol. 2 p. 1 - 42

This paper focuses on how changes among public bureaucracies influence the mobility of women into upper level jobs. More specifically, I ask, how is that purposeful reform programs and incremental transformations of the State influence women’s managerial attainment? Even further, is it the culture or the structure of public bureaucracies the determining factor of women integration at the top? By means of ethnographic research taking two segments of the Uruguayan State as cases, I explore the adequacy of the structural or enabling perspective and the culture or coercive view about gender and bureaucracies, extending this discussion outside North American and Western European contexts. The empirical reality of women in the Uruguayan State suggests that public bureaucracies are complex sites. As such, they should not be assessed as either beneficial or harmful for women on the basis of one single crucial factor, i.e. their structure or culture. As I show, women face opportunities and constraints that result from the combination of gender cultural beliefs, the daily interactions among members and the work structures and procedures of bureaucracies. Second, how these factors combine to allow more women into management depends on whether the context of an agency is one of purposeful reform or piecemeal transformation. This more complex line of inquiry should be introduced to our current discussion of gender and bureaucracies, at least for the more specific occupation of managers and professionals.