Gendered Funding: United Way Board Composition and the Funding of Women- and Girl-Serving Organizations

Abstract

Representative bureaucracy theory posits that the passive representation of women in leadership positions will lead to active representation of the concerns of women in general. This article attempts to identify whether this theory plays out on boards of nonprofit funding organizations, specifically United Ways across the United States. Using random effects modeling of interrupted time series data covering 15 years, the findings suggest a small yet significant nonlinear effect of women in leadership positions on boards upon the size of funding for women- and girl-serving organizations. This partially supports representative bureaucracy theory, but raises questions as to why there is a negative representational effect past a certain “critical mass” of women.