166-410 Engendered Management

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Admission to fourth year political science

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

The course will focus on changing trends within management in the public sector and in applied areas of public policy, in the context of current trends in public sector change, including: privatisation, contracting out, devolution, downsizing. It traces 1980s challenges from equal opportunity policy to the positioning of women in bureaucracy, debates around gender and management, gender and work, and gender and interests; claims about the reappropriation of EO discourses, debates around gender and leadership in management and recent debates on masculinity and management/managerialism. Theoretically, it engages with same/difference debates; feminist critiques of essentialism; challenges around gender and caring; liberal/radical/postmodern feminist theories; the interfaces between feminisms and the state, the role of femocrats, and the links between certain sorts of masculinities and management cultures and practices. Students will gain an understanding of major trends in public management in the 1980s and 1990s and the positioning of gender within these trends. They will develop analytical skills for interpreting the interface between feminisms and the state, and masculinities and feminisms within the new public management and the re-structuring of public sector.

Assessment

Essay and assignment work totalling 6,000 words.

Prescribed Texts

Connell R.W. (1995) Masculinities, St Leondards, Allen and Unwin Itzin C. & Newman J. (1995) Gender, Culture and Organisational change, London, Routledge Savage M. and Witz A. (eds) (1992) Gender and Bureaucracy, Cambridge, MA, Sociological Review/Blackwell