This article presents an analysis of the political consciousness and commitments of six gender equity coordinators who served in the same public agency in the United States during a 20-year period in an effort to contribute knowledge about the people who institute movement-inspired laws and the diverse ways in which they come to understand their mandates and the organizational and political milieus within which they work. The author’s findings corroborate existing research indicating that bureaucrats have considerable autonomy to interpret equity law and vary in their approaches. Most significantly, the author shows the ways in which individuals’ commitment to movement ideals can deepen (rather than abate) in the course of working as equity bureaucrats.
Allen, Judith. 1990. Does feminism need a theory of the state? In Playing the state, edited by S. Watson. London: Verso.
2.
Alvarez, Sonia. 1990. Engendering democracy in Brazil: Women’s movements in transition politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
3.
Bilotta, Bruno. 1991. Women in bureaucracy in Italy in the 80s. Sociologia del Diritto18:103-133.
4.
Black, Naomi. 1993. The Canadian women’s movement: The second wave. In Changing patterns: Women in Canada, edited by Sandra Burt, Lorraine Code, and Lindsay Dorney. Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart.
5.
Booth, Karen. 1998. National mother, global whore, and transnational femocrats: The politics of AIDS and the construction of women at the World Health Organization. Feminist Studies24:115-139.
6.
Bulbeck, Chilla. 1997. Living feminism: The impact of the women’s movement on three generations of Australian women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7.
Burstein, Paul. 1991. Legal mobilization as a social movement tactic: The struggle for equal employment opportunity. American Journal of Sociology96:1201-1225.
8.
Chappell, Louise. 2002. The “Femocrat” strategy: Expanding the repertoire of feminist activists. Parliamentary Affairs55:85-98.
9.
Collins, Sharon. 1993. Blacks on the bubble: The vulnerability of Black executives in white corporations. Sociological Quarterly34:429-447.
10.
Daenzer, Patricia. 1997. Challenging diversity: Black women and social welfare. In Women and the Canadian welfare state: Challenges and change, edited by P. M. Evans and G. R. Wekerle. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
11.
Deacon, Desley. 1989. Managing gender: The state, the new middle class, and women workers, 1830- 1930. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.
12.
Dobbin, Frank, John R. Sutton, John W. Meyer, and Richard Scott. 1993. Equal opportunity law and the construction of internal labor markets. American Journal of Sociology99:396-427.
13.
Edelman, L. B., S. Patterson, E. Chambliss, and H. S. Erlanger. 1991. Legal ambiguity and the politics of compliance: Affirmative action officers’ dilemma. Law and Policy13:73-97.
14.
Edelman, Lauren B.1992. Legal ambiguity and symbolic structures: Organizational mediation of civil rights law. American Journal of Sociology97:1531-1576.
15.
Eisenstein, Hester. 1995. The Australian femocratic experiment: A feminist case for bureaucracy. In Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new women’s movement, edited by M. Marx Ferree and P. Yancey Martin. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
16.
Eisenstein, Hester. 1996. Inside agitators: Australian femocrats and the state. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
17.
Eisenstein, Zillah. 1975. Capitalist patriarchy and the case for socialist feminism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
18.
Fainsod Katzenstein, Mary. 1990. Feminism within American institutions: Unobtrusive mobilization in the 1980s. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society16:27-54.
19.
Fainsod Katzenstein, Mary. 1998. Faithful and fearless: Feminist protest inside the church and military. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
20.
Ferguson, Kathy E.1984. The feminist case against bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
21.
Ferree, Myra Marx, and Beth B. Hess. 1994. Controversy and coalition: The new feminist movement across three decades of change. New York: Twayne.
22.
Findlay, Sue. 1997. Institutionalizing feminist politics: Learning from the struggles for equal pay in Ontario. In Women and the Canadian welfare state: Challenges and change, edited by P. M. Evans and G. R. Wekerle. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
23.
Goetz, Anne Marie. 1998. Women in politics and gender equity in policy: South Africa and Uganda. Review of African Political Economy25:241-262.
24.
Goodwin, Jeff, and Ruth Horowitz. 2002. Introduction: The methodological strengths and dilemmas of qualitative sociology. Qualitative Sociology25:33-47.
25.
Haney, Lynne. 1996. Homeboys, babies, men in suits: The state and the reproduction of male dominance. American Journal of Sociology61:759-778.
26.
Hart, Vivien. 1992. Feminism and bureaucracy: The minimum wage experiment in the District of Columbia. Journal of American Studies26:1-22.
27.
Jasper, James. 1997. The art of moral protest: Culture, biography, and creativity in social movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
28.
Klein, Ethel. 1984. Gender politics: From consciousness to mass politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
29.
Lieberson, Stanley. 1992. Small N’s and big conclusions: An examination of the reasoning in comparative studies based on a small number of cases. In What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry, edited by Charles Ragin and Howard Becker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
Lindgren, Ralph, and Nadine Taub. 1988. The law of sex discrimination. St. Paul, MN: West.
31.
MacKinnon, Catherine. 1983. Feminism, Marxism, method and the state: Toward a feminist jurisprudence. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society8:635-658.
32.
Mansbridge, Jane, and Aldon Morris, eds. 2001. Oppositional consciousness: The subjective roots of social protest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
33.
Martin, P., J. Reynolds, and S. Keith. 2002. Gender bias and feminist consciousness among judges and attorneys: A standpoint theory analysis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society27:665-701.
34.
McCann, Michael W.1998. Social movements and the mobilization of law. In Social movements and American political institutions, edited by A. N. Costain and A. McFarland. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
35.
McGee Bailey, Susan. 1992. The AAUW report: How schools are shortchanging girls: A study of major findings on girls and education. Washington, DC: AAUW Educational Foundation.
36.
Melucci, Alberto. 1996. Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37.
Moss Kanter, Rosabeth. 1977. Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books.
38.
Naples, Nancy. 1998. Grassroots warriors: Activist mothering, community work, and the war on poverty. New York: Routledge.
39.
Pennington, Bill. 2004. Title IX trickles down to girls of generation Z. The New York Times, 29 June.
40.
Pfeffer, Jeffrey. 1981. Power in organizations. Boston: Pitman.
41.
Pringle, Rosemary, and Sophie Watson. 1998. “Women’s interests” and the post-structuralist state. In Feminism and politics, edited by Anne Phillips. New York: Oxford University Press.
42.
Ragin, Charles. 1992. “Casing” and the process of social inquiry. In What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry, edited by Charles Ragin and Howard Becker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
43.
Reinharz, Shulamit. 1992. Feminist methods in social research. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
44.
Seidman, Gay. 1999. Gendered citizenship: South Africa’s democratic transition and the construction of a gendered state. Gender & Society13:287-307.
45.
Seidman, Gay. 2001. “Strategic” challenges to gender inequality: The South African Gender Commission. Ethnography2:219-241.
46.
Stake, Robert E.1994. Case studies. In Handbook of qualitative research, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
47.
Strauss, Valerie. 2003. Administration opts not to make changes to Title IX. Washington Post, 11 July. Available from washingtonpost.com.
48.
Stromquist, Nelly P.1997. Gender policies in American education: Reflections on federal legislation and action. In Feminist critical policy analysis I: A perspective from primary and secondary schooling, edited by Catherine Marshall. London: Falmer.
49.
Swiebel, Joke. 1988. The gender of bureaucracy: Reflections on policy-making for women. Politics8:14-19.
50.
Walton, John. 1992. Making the theoretical case. In What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry, edited by C. Ragin and H. Becker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
51.
Waylen, Georgina. 1996. Democratization, feminism and the state in Chile: The establishment of SERNAM. In Women and the state: International perspectives, edited by S. M. Rai and G. Leivesley. Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis.
52.
Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Floya Anthias. 1989. Introduction. In Woman-nation-state, edited by Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias. London: Macmillan.
53.
Zald, Mayer N.2000. Ideologically structured action: An enlarged agenda for social movement research. Mobilization5:1-16.
