Beyond Representation: Gender, Authority, and City Managers

Abstract

For the last 50 years, the U.S. government has worked to address the sex pay gap in the workforce. Nevertheless, the pay gap remains persistent across sectors and organizational hierarchies. This study investigates the direct and indirect effects of sex and authority profile on the pay gap of city managers in the United States. The study uses ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis to predict the relationship between a city manager’s sex and authority profile variables as well as the relationship between authority profile variables and a city manager’s annual salary. Our OLS analysis shows that sex (being a male city manager) along with workplace authority variables are all positive and significant predictors of pay. The study also finds that, on average, female city managers earn 73% of what male city managers earn. They also manage 60% of the number of employees and oversee 62% of the annual budget compared with male city managers.

Equal Employment Opportunity: Women Bureaucrats in Male‐Dominated Professions

“…The unlevel ground for women within their organizations has enormous repercussions for their career development (Alkadry, Bishu, and Ali 2019). Reflecting on the gendered experiences of women in our study, one can argue that when gendered performances in organizations are normalized and left unchallenged, they perpetuate inequities that have substantive implications for the professional lives of women with respect to power, economic benefits, and social position, hence compromising the “economic case” for gender equity.…”

“…In the federal government, women earn 90 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn (Hatch Institute 2018). At the local level, the pay gap is present for women in city management roles even after accounting for human capital and organizational factors (Alkadry, Bishu, and Ali 2019). Similarly, Luo, Schleifer, and Hill (2019) report that women in policing earn 84 percent of the salary earned by their male counterparts.…”

How to Do a Salary Equity Study: With an Illustrative Example From Higher Education

“…Furthermore, if employees are segregated by position, occupation, or administrative role—and the model includes controls for those segregating dimensions—then underlying differences by sex, race, or loyalty will not be detected, despite clear cause for concern (Alkadry, Bishu, & Ali, 2017; Arulampalam, Booth, & Bryan, 2007; Blau & Kahn, 2017; Smart, 1991; Smith, 2012). For example, if all the women are in one occupation and all the men in another, then a model with indicator variables for occupation would be unable to detect differences in compensation by sex.…”

One of the Boys? Gender Similarities and Differences in Human Capital among Senior Civil Servants in Denmark

“…This article set out to explore if the men and women who make it to the top of the Danish civil service are alike when we analyse dimensions of their human capital. We took interest in this question because the literature on gender equality and gender representation in public organizations points to a lack of equality between men and women in senior executive positions (Bowling et al 2006; Alkadry et al 2017; Yu 2018) and because we know from a recent survey that this is also the case in one of the most gender‐equal countries in the world, Denmark (Ledelseskommissionen 2017). We further illustrated this by doing a pool analysis, which showed that gender differences at the executive level are not explained by the pool from which they are mainly recruited; rather the opposite.…”

“…Women and men have different career patterns in both the public and private sectors, and numerous studies have documented gender differences regarding pay and advancement (Bowling et al 2006; Alkadry et al 2017; Yu 2018). In a recent study, the Danish Leadership and Management Commission documented how, while women constitute 60 percent of the first‐line managers in Denmark, the share of women falls to 44 percent at the intermediate level and 36 percent at the senior management level (Ledelseskommissionen 2017, 20).…”