Affirmative Action and City Managers: Attitudes toward Recruitment of Women

Abstract

Historical and contemporary patterns of recruiting women into the management of the local public sector generally parallel the patterns of blacks and members of other minority groups. Recent advances in the recruitment of women can be attributed in part to the passage of the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Act and its primary instrument of implementation, affirmative action. Equal employment opportunity means having a setting where discriminatory hiring practices are nonexistent. Affirmative action refers to special and exceptional efforts on the part of the public manager to rectify the results of current and previous discriminatory practices and, ultimately, to ensure equal employment opportunity. Since the 1972 enactment, affirmative action has been the primary mechanism for the development of a representative bureaucracy at the local level. While change is evident, from seven female city managers in 1971 to over 100 in 1986, the absence of greater numbers of women in decision-making circles calls into question some underlying assumptions made in the area of public personnel administration. Specifically, this study examines the extent to which city managers support the use of affirmative action practices in the recruitment of women into managerial positions. Analysis also focuses on several exogenous factors that help to explain the level of support which city managers have to undertake special and exceptional efforts to recruit women.