Claiming Legitimacy: Gender and Identity Among U.S. Federal Regulatory Agency Leaders

Abstract

While equity is a core organizational value in the public sector, women continue to be underrepresented in the upper echelons of public sector organizations. Existing explanations for why more women do not advance to top leadership positions consider factors such as human and social capital, gender stereotypes and beliefs about effective leadership, familial expectations, and work-life conflict. Such studies, largely based on private-sector organizations, focus on why women do not reach top leadership positions rather than trying to understand how, or why, some do. By contrast, this study examines how men and women engage in identity work to attain a top leadership role. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of confirmation hearing transcripts for 67 women and men who held top-level leadership positions in 12 U.S. federal regulatory agencies between 1983 and 2013. We use a grounded theory and narrative inquiry approach to examine how these nominees express their identity and signal their legitimacy in order to claim these leadership positions. Our preliminary analysis finds that while both men and women assert personal and professional qualifications to legitimize their claims to top leadership positions, they do so in different, possibly gendered, ways.