Kennedy School Sexism

JOHN F. Kennedy was the first American president to prohibit federal agencies from practicing sex discrimination in the civil service. Prior to 1963, federal jobs could routinely be set aside for men or for women only. Since then women have risen to prominent roles in business, press, polities, and in federal, state, and local government. Women serve on important corporate boards, are elected to public office and hold high ranks in the 1988 presidential campaigns. The campaign manager for Governor Michael Dukakis is a woman.

But at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government the late President's vision of equality in the public workplace casts barely a thin shadow over the institution dedicated to the pursuit of the value of public management. In fact, students emerging from the school's prestigious Senior Executive Fellows Program--in which government agencies pay up to $17,000 per student for management training--will conclude that women are hardly protagonists in the public debate at all.

The near absence of women as faculty members and as subjects of case study analysis suggests that, in Harvard's eyes, women would be neither leaders nor facilitators of change. The Kennedy School has one tenured faculty member who is a woman. There were eight female students in a recent class of 50 public sector executives and three female lecturers out of more than 20 males.

Among Harvard's famed case study analyses, the number of female protagonists can be counted on one hand. Students analyze actions by federal and state bureaucracies who routinely play out roles in public drama, ignoring any number of weighty female public figures. Carla Hills, Juanita Krepps, Anne Armstrong, Nancy Kassebaum and even Massachusetts' own Margaret Heckler have escaped Harvard's notice. One exception is Anne Gorsuch-Burford. But never mind, hers is just a sideshow in the public drama starring William Ruckleshaus.

In conversation, Peter Zimmerman, associate dean at the Kennedy School and director of the executive training programs, affirms that, "The frequency of our focusing on women, minorities and foreign nationals is abysmal. It is a recognized problem." But one must ask, for a recognized problem, where is, the will to change.

AT the Kennedy School, recurring problems such as discrimination in employment, sexual harassment and male-female power roles are brushed off as "communications" or "personal" problems. Faculty advise female students not to wage such unwinnable battles as the use of gender specific pronouns. Biases and insults go unchallenged, and workplace issues are overlooked. Positive images for women in public service are virtually ignored. Instead, images in and outside of the classroom reinforce the diminished role and expectations for women. American heroes pictured in academic halls and featured speakers are, with rare exception, men. Program staff, responsible for administrative details and running errands for faculty and students are, of course, women.

The United States Navy recently opened up thousands of new jobs to women following an internal study which found that career enhancing assignments for both enlisted women and officers were unnecessarily limited. It found frustration among its female ranks and sexual harassment rampant throughout the service. The Navy has addressed questions that the Kennedy School should not ignore. What impact does polarization among men and women, and dead-end career opportunities, have on the productivity of an organization? How can problems be identified? What can be done to ensure a work environment which discourages hostility among employees? And how does all of this change when a woman is in charge?

If the Kennedy School is truly committed to an expanded understanding of the value and means of public management, its message that value is appraised and perpetuated men only must change. Women and racial and ethnic minorities must be incorporated into the debate about public value, in a measure at least comparable to their achievements in the world beyond Cambridge.

I do not advocate quotas or the establishment of a consciousness-raising department of women's studies at the Kennedy School. But women must be recruited as faculty and students there. Case studies must be researched and taught to examine positive and forceful means of eroding discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. The successes and failures of women in public policy and management need to be examined as well as those of noteworthy men.

These are tasks that should be undertaken seriously and soon. Otherwise the boastful claims of the Kennedy School's public management programs must bear a muted footenote: within resides a vision of public value, for men only. And as long as this continues, federal policymakers must legitimately ask if either the federal government or its executive students are getting their money's worth from Cambridge.

Diana Tabler is a health care policy specialist at the Department of Defense in Washington, D.C. and was a participant in the Senior Executive Fellows Program at the Kennedy School last semester.