Representative Bureaucracy in the Public Service? A Critical Analysis of the Challenges Confronting Women in the Civil Service of Ghana

Abstract

In the public administration literature, the debate concerning the representation of minorities in the public bureaucracy continues to attract attention. The idea is that passive representation may lead to active representation with the later helping to develop policies and programs that will benefit minorities. Consequently, a number of governments have been implementing policies to enhance the involvement of minorities in public services. The Ghana government has not been left out in this endeavor. Since 1957, it has continued to institute measures to ensure a fair gender representation in the bureaucracy. This notwithstanding, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy continue to be dominated by males despite the over representation of women at the lower levels. What are the challenges confronting women in the public sector that make it difficult to achieve active representation? In this article, we examine the challenges confronting women to achieve active representation from a representative bureaucracy perspective.

Keywords:

• Ghana
• gender
• representative bureaucracy
• minorities

Notes

1. ¹While men make most decisions in the traditional sense, the final decision is accepted only when the queen mother, or the oldest woman in the family, has accepted or approved it. Christine Müller (2006) has noted how old women, in particular, are responsible for knowledge legitimation in the village and the family. She notes that as knowledge carriers they also have a strong position with respect to regulation of family and to political matters. See also Brydon (1996).

2. ²The National Liberation Council was later renamed the Supreme Military Council (SMC). In 1988, the head of state and leader of the SMC was removed in a palace coup. The SMC was later then reconstituted as SMC II.

3. ³The PNDC came to power on December 31, 1981.

4. ⁴The leader of the 31st DWM was the First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings.

5. ⁵The NPP government was democratically elected in 2000, and governed from 2001 to 2008, when it lost the general elections to the National Democratic Congress (NDC).