Leisha DeHart-Davis
Justin Marlowe
Essays on
Equity, Gender,
and Diversity
Leisha DeHart-Davis is an assistant
professor of public administration at the
University of Kansas. Her research interests
include the gender dimensions of public
administration and the effects of
organizational structure and reforms on
public employees.
E-mail: lddavis@ku.edu.
Justin Marlowe is an assistant
professor of public administration at the
University of Kansas. His research interests
include public budgeting and financial
management, municipal management, and
research methods.
E-mail: jmarlowe@ku.edu.
Sanjay K. Pandey is an assistant
professor of public administration at the
University of Kansas. He conducts research
on public management and health policy.
Recently, he directed Phase II of the
National Administrative Studies Project.
E-mail: skpandey@ku.edu.
Sanjay K. Pandey
University of Kansas
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation
Feminist scholars of public administration have critiqued
the dominance of masculine imagery in public admin-
istration theory and practice. However, public service
motivation is one area of public administration discourse
that contains both feminine and masculine imagery.
Focusing on Perry’s multidimensional public service
motivation scale, the authors borrow from a range of
social science literatures to contend that compassion is a
feminine dimension of public service motivation, whereas
attraction to policy making and commitment to public
service are masculine dimensions. Data from a survey of
public managers in state health and human service agen-
cies reveal that women score higher on Perry’s compassion
subscale but also on attraction to policy making. No
statistically significant gender differences were found on
commitment to public service.
F
eminist scholars of public administration have
uncovered and critiqued the dominance of
culturally masculine imagery in public adminis-
tration theory and practice. In particular, expertise,
virtue, leadership, and bureaucracy—lauded charac-
teristics of public administration—are based on male
perspectives on the world (Duerst-Lahti and Johnson
1990, 1992; Ferguson 1984; Stivers 2002). In Fergu-
son’s critique of bureaucracy, for example, public
administration discourse emphasizes the control and
subordination of employees by upper management,
mirroring the control and subordination of women by
men throughout history. This emphasis on control
and subordination leads lower-level bureaucrats to
resort to “feminization” as a means of coping with
their secondary status, a strategy that includes defer-
ring to superiors and conveying favorable images to
them.
From Stivers’s perspective, images of expertise, virtue,
and leadership are not only culturally masculine but
also deliberately unfeminine in their cultural con-
struction. Expertise based on science pits objectivity
against emotion, culturally masculine autonomy
against culturally feminine responsiveness, scientific
authority against lay perspectives, and professional
expectations against societal expectations (which, for
women, revolve around family). Leadership is cultur-
ally masculine not only in objective terms (more
leaders are men) but also in subjective terms (leaders
should look male and pale). Public virtue is portrayed
in decidedly culturally masculine overtones, in terms
of paternalistic guardians, autonomous fame seekers,
commanding heroes (not heroines), and citizens who
have historically been identified as white and male.
Duerst-Lahti and Johnson suggest that public organi-
zations may actually be more culturally masculine
than other organizational types given the influence of
the “manly” Weberian bureaucracy and its undervalu-
ation of the culturally feminine. Though the critique
of public administration practice and theory is both
well founded and well articulated, recent public ad-
ministration scholarship has become more mindful of
gender (see, e.g., Meier, O’Toole, and Goerdel 2006
on management functions and outcomes; Rubin and
Bartle 2005 on budgetary impacts; and Wilkins and
Keiser 2006 on active and passive representation, to
name a few).
Continuing in this vein, the study reported here as-
serts that public service motivation is one area of
public administration discourse that contains both
culturally feminine and culturally masculine imagery.
Public service motivation can be defined as “an indi-
vidual’s predisposition to respond to motives
grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions
and organizations” (Perry and Wise 1990, 368). We
argue that three motives—attraction to policy mak-
ing, compassion, and commitment to public
interest—have distinct gender dimensions. Further-
more, we expect these gender dimensions to be
observable in comparisons of male and female public
managers. Although some recent research has noted
gender differences in public service motivation, these
efforts do not attempt an in-depth explanation of the
differences (Bright 2005; Moynihan and Pandey,
forthcoming; Perry 1997).
Given assertions in the literature that public service
motivation should increase organizational effectiveness
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation 873
 (Perry and Wise 1990; Rainey 1982; Romzek 1990),
lead to higher bureaucratic performance (Perry and
Wise 1990), and identify candidates for public service
(Moynihan and Pandey, forthcoming), it is important
to scrutinize the gender dimensions of the underlying
construct. Used in these ways, a purely culturally
feminine or masculine conception of public service
motivation risks generating incomplete and biased
assessments of organizations, current workers, and
candidate employees.
The data used to examine gender dimensions of the
public service motivation construct were collected by
the National Administrative Studies Project during
late fall 2002 and winter 2003. This study adminis-
tered a mail survey to managers in state health and
human service agencies nationwide. Approximately
half the respondents were women. The hypotheses
were tested using an ordered logit model that included
a range of demographic variables as controls.
The first section profiles the public service motivation
concept, with particular attention to Perry’s (1996)
conceptual and measurement scheme. The second
section, borrowing from a range of social science
literature, outlines expectations for gender differences
in different forms of public service motivation. The
third and fourth sections identify the data and mea-
sures used to test these hypotheses, and the fifth sec-
tion describes the results. The final two sections
discuss the broader implications of these results.
Public Service Motivation
Several authors have traced the history of public ser-
vice motivation as a scholarly topic, although they
vary in their emphasis on its intellectual precursors,
such as those focusing on studies conducted during
the 1960s to examine differences in reward prefer-
ences between public and private sector workers
(Crewson 1997; Scott and Pandey 2005); those em-
phasizing Buchanan’s 1975 comparison of job involve-
ment between the public and private sectors or
Rainey’s 1982 examination of more direct indicators
of the public service ethic (Brewer and Selden 1998;
Brewer, Selden, and Facer 2000); and those examining
motivation scholarship in the social psychology and
sociology literature from the 1960s to the 1980s
(Wise 2004).
Regardless of the starting point identified for public
service motivation research, a turning point in this
line of inquiry occurred in 1990, when Perry and
Wise proposed a theoretical definition of public ser-
vice motivation. The two scholars defined public
service motivation as “an individual’s predisposition to
respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in
public institutions and organizations,” with a motive
defined as a “psychological deficiency or need that an
individual feels some compulsion to eliminate.”
874 Public Administration Review • November | December 2006
Borrowing from sociological research by Knoke and
Wright-Isak (1982), Perry and Wise delineated three
categories of motives: affective, rational, and norma-
tive. Affective motives are driven by emotion, rational
motives by individual utility maximization, and
norm-based motives by the desire to fulfill societal
expectations (which, for public service, relates to
the desire to serve the common good). These opera-
tional definitions clarified the public service motiva-
tion concept, which prior to that time had been
marked by vagueness and inconsistency of meaning
(Rainey 1982).
Following this research, Perry (1996) developed a
measurement scale for this new operational definition
of public service motivation. Scale development began
with the crafting of 35 survey items developed from a
literature review and focus groups with master of
public administration candidates on conceptions of
public service. The 35 survey items were devised to
correspond to six dimensions of public service motiva-
tion: attraction to policy making, commitment to
public interest, civic duty, social justice, compassion,
and self-sacrifice. With the exception of self-sacrifice,
these individual motivations mapped onto the three
categories of motivations that Perry and Wise identi-
fied in 1990: attraction to policy making fell into the
rational category; commitment to public interest,
civic duty, and social justice into the norm-based
category; and compassion into the affective category.
(Self-sacrifice was retained because of its presence in
the public administration literature.) These survey
items were included in a questionnaire that was ad-
ministered to small groups of students pursuing mas-
ter’s degrees in public administration and business.
Feedback from these groups triggered three revisions
of the survey items (see Perry 1996 for details).
The final survey items were administered to a wide-
ranging sample (including master’s degree students,
business executives, and state and county government
employees) that yielded 376 responses. Confirmatory
factor analysis of the resulting survey data detected
four dimensions of public service motivation: attrac-
tion to policy making, commitment to public interest/
civic duty, compassion, and self-sacrifice. Interestingly,
Perry found that commitment to public interest/civic
duty was highly correlated with self-sacrifice (suggest-
ing that it could be combined into one dimension)
but that the four-dimension model provided a better
fit for the interdependence of the individual survey
items than the three-dimension model.
The Perry PSM scale is important to public adminis-
tration scholarship for several reasons. First, it repre-
sents the most methodologically sophisticated
development of the public service motivation con-
struct, and it is a vast improvement over previous
indirect measures (Brewer and Selden 1998; Brewer,
Selden, and Facer 2000). Second, it has been used for
practical purposes, such as assessing attitudinal
changes among President Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps
program participants (Perry 1996) and measuring
public service motivation in the 1996 Merit Principles
Survey of the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
Scholars have also used the scale to examine the rela-
tionship between public service motivation and indi-
vidual bureaucratic performance (Alonso and Lewis
2001), individual conceptions of public service moti-
vation (Brewer, Selden, and Facer 2000), perceptions
of red tape (Scott and Pandey 2005), and organiza-
tional effectiveness (Kim 2005), as well as the indi-
vidual and organization determinants of public service
motivation (Moynihan and Pandey, forthcoming).
Given the increasing use of the Perry PSM scale, it is
important to explore its gender dimensions. We will
now turn to a broad array of literature that underlies
expectations for gender differences in the PSM scale.
Public Service Motivation and Gender
At the outset, the categorical drivers of public service
motivation—rationality, emotion, and norms—are
themselves laden with culturally constructed meanings
and understandings that pertain to gender. Rational
motives are goal oriented and assumed to be a function
of individual choice based on a consideration of
potential gains and losses. This approach is problematic
from a gender perspective because women have
historically operated within narrower physical and
social boundaries than men, allowing them to consider
and pursue fewer choices and goals (Kelly and Boutilier
1978). Emotion has long been considered the strength
and weakness of femininity, appropriate for the
perpetuation of hearth and home but an inhibition to
clear thinking (Blum 1982) and an unacknowledged
and undervalued skill in the marketplace (Guy and
Newman 2004). As for societal norms, they differ for
women and men based on the historical relegation of
women to the private sphere and their corresponding
exclusion from public life (Stivers 2002; Thomas
1994).
We hypothesize that there are gender dimensions to
three specific public service motivations within each
of these categories: attraction to policy making, a
rational motive; compassion, an affective motive; and
commitment to public interest, a normative motive.
Both feminist theorists (e.g., Gilligan 1982; Mumby
and Putnam 1992; Ruddick 1989) and “naïve theo-
rists,” to use Fritz Heider’s coinage for laypersons,
concur that reason or rationality is culturally con-
strued as a masculine concept, just as affective motives
are culturally construed as feminine. Although there is
no overwhelming support for the gender dimensions
of normative motives being either male or female, the
concept of commitment to public interest makes
explicit reference to the public sphere. Given the
historical limitations on women’s participation in the
public sphere, along with the continuing tensions
between public and private loyalties experienced by
modern women, we expect commitment to public
service to be a culturally masculine trait. We will
consider these issues in greater detail below.
Attraction to Policy Making
Attraction to policy making is a public service motive
based on the desire to satisfy personal needs while
serving the public interest (Perry and Wise 1990).
Categorized as a rational public service motive because
it involves maximizing individual utility, policy mak-
ing appeals to those who seek a sense of achievement
and self-importance (Wise 2000). Policy processes
provide opportunities to satisfy both desires through
competition for preferred outcomes that produces
winners and losers (Bardach 1977).1
The game-like nature of policy processes suggests that
attraction to policy making is a culturally masculine
construct, based on studies of masculinity that indi-
cate an emphasis on self and individuality, as well as
the pursuit of self-interest and competition (Gilligan
1982; Maccoby 1990; McGuffey and Rich 1999;
Messner 2000). These attributes are reflected in boys’
games, which emphasize the quest for domination and
individual achievement (Hasbrook and Harris 1999;
Messner 2000; Moller, Hymel, and Rubin 1992), as
well as men’s leadership styles, which are characterized
by rationality, competitiveness, and the goal of win-
ning (Loden 1985, 121; Rosener 1995, 73). Lips
(1978) notes that the desire to achieve does not ap-
pear to differ for males and females, but the motiva-
tion to achieve is aroused under different conditions:
Men are motivated by instructions that stress compe-
tition and leadership, whereas women are motivated
by instructions that stress social skills.
Conversely, studies of culturally feminine attributes
portray a struggle to establish identity, a tendency
toward collaboration over competition, and an avoid-
ance of games with clear winners and losers in favor of
win–win scenarios (Beutel and Marini 1995;
Chodorow 1974; Gilligan 1982; Maccoby 1998;
Moller, Hymel, and Rubin 1992). Exemplifying the
latter attribute, Kohlberg (1969) noted girls’ prefer-
ences for games involving indirect competition, such
as jump rope or hopscotch. Lever (1976) concluded
that girls avoid conflict in game playing, preferring to
terminate the game when arguments break out. By
contrast, boys appeal to rules when disputes arise,
resulting in short disruptions of game playing. A more
recent study of children’s play noted that girls tend to
play in smaller same-sex groups in which players can
be sensitive to their partners’ needs, in contrast with
boys, who tend to play in larger groups in which
conflict and competition dominate (Fabes, Martin,
and Hanish 2003). Again, Loden (1985) argues that
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation 875
 women’s leadership styles follow the patterns exhibited
in children’s games, with female managers favoring
cooperation and empowerment over competition and
winning. Rosener (1990) and Helgesen (1995) make
similar arguments, focusing on the tendency among
female leaders to favor empowerment and shared
power, a finding that has received substantiation in a
meta-analysis of the scholarly literature (Van Engen
and Willemsen 2004).
To illustrate how these attributes surface in a political
context, Thomas notes that the influx of women into
the political arena during the 1970s was expected to
engender more cooperative methods of doing business
than the “cutthroat competition and battles for domi-
nance” that were “the norm” (1994, 6). That such
norms did not change led some women to withdraw
from political processes completely.
The historical exclusion of women from policy mak-
ing (Stivers 2000) provides another source of expecta-
tion for gender differences in attraction to policy
making. This exclusion has resulted in the continuing
domination of men in politics, leading to the message
that politics is about men and for men (Elder 2004)
and that women are emotionally unsuitable for poli-
tics (Fox and Lawless 2003). Thus, current political
processes may seem alien to potential female partici-
pants, possibly explaining the low percentage of
women who run for elected office or seek higher-level
appointed positions (Elder 2004; Fox and Lawless
2003). Though public managers are not necessarily in
the thick of political competition, public organiza-
tions are not insulated from politics, and performance
in top-management roles requires considerable politi-
cal acumen.
Fox and Schuhmann (1999) provide one of the few
studies to illuminate gender differences in attraction to
policy processes in a public administration context. In
interviews with city managers, these scholars found
that females and males similarly proclaimed a love of
politics and a commitment to a specific policy area.
However, the female city managers were less likely
than their male counterparts to consider themselves
policy entrepreneurs; more likely than their male
counterparts to see city management as oriented to-
ward administration rather than public policy formu-
lation; and more likely than men to say that city
managers should remain neutral on controversial city
issues. These observations led Fox and Schumann to
conclude that female city managers are less likely to
perceive themselves as policy entrepreneurs and more
likely to perceive themselves as managers or facilitators
than their male counterparts. Therefore, we expect that
H1: Male public managers will be more at-
tracted to policy making than their female
counterparts.
876 Public Administration Review • November | December 2006
Compassion
Compassion is a public service motive that entails love
and concern for others and a desire that others be
protected (Perry and Wise 1990). Compassion is
categorized as an affective motive that involves re-
sponding emotionally to humankind (Frederickson
and Hart 1985). It is also construed as a culturally
feminine quality (Stivers 2002, 58), underscored by
the tendency for women to define themselves in rela-
tion to others more so than men (Chodorow 1974)
and to make moral decisions based on the impact of
those actions on others (Gilligan 1982). There is
scholarly disagreement as to whether culturally femi-
nine compassion is the result of nature, nurture, or a
combination of both (Chodorow 1974).2
The notion of compassion as a culturally feminine
trait is implied by historical and behavioral studies of
gender differences in female and male public adminis-
trators. Women pioneered social policies and causes
during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the
United States, a time when charitable work signified
the virtuous tendencies of women (Stivers 2000). The
dominance of women in “caring” agencies continues
to this day, a fact that is supported by the overrepre-
sentation of women in public welfare, housing, and
health agencies (Lewis and Nice 1994); in employ-
ment security, human resources, and civil rights agen-
cies (Riccucci and Saidel 1997); and in positions that
require “emotional labor,” that is, work that requires
responsiveness and a caring attitude (Guy and
Newman 2004). Women are also well represented and
sometimes overrepresented within federal, state, and
local redistributive agencies, which tend to involve
caring functions (Kerr, Miller, and Reid 2002;
Newman 1994; Reid, Kerr, and Miller 2000; Reid,
Miller, and Kerr 2004). These behavioral patterns lead
us to expect that
H2: Female public managers will indicate a
higher compassion motive than their male
counterparts.
It should be noted that compassion’s inclusion as
a public service motive is significant in light of its
deliberate omission from Weber’s “ideal” bureaucracy,
as well as from the virtues listed by such moral
philosophers as Kant and Hegel (Blum 1982).3
Compassion has been shown to be valued equally by
male and female public managers as an important trait
of bureaucracy (Duerst-Lahti and Johnston 1992,
144). Thus, the inclusion of compassion as a motive
for public service indicates a decisive shift in the way
public service is conceived by both scholars and
practitioners.
Commitment to Public Service
Commitment to public service is based on one’s desire
to fulfill a societal obligation or standard and thus is
categorized as a norm-based motive (Perry 1997). In their historical participation in civic issues that have
particular, commitment to public service entails loy- shaped the construction of the public administration
alty to duty and country, as well as a desire to serve field (Stivers 2000, 8). To do so, however, would
the public interest (Perry and Wise 1990). In 1997, generate a false rival hypothesis: Our contention is not
Perry found that men scored higher than women on that women are less committed to public service but
the public interest construct but offered no explana- that declaring commitment to the public sphere is
tion as to why. Perhaps one explanation is that a more problematic for women, who face greater com-
norm-based public service motivation is problematic peting loyalties—and feel more ambivalence about
for gender when one considers that society holds those competing loyalties—than men (Hattery 2001;
significantly different expectations for women and Maushart 1999). The competing loyalties argument
men. These differing expectations pertain to the sepa- has been used to examine the gender aspects of civic
ration of life into the public and private spheres, with engagement: The disproportionate amount of unpaid
women being relegated to the latter for most of his- “care work” performed by women, ranging from
tory (Blum 1982; Ferguson 1984; Stivers 2002). housework to child care to elder care, interferes with
Confinement to the private sphere has meant that their ability to claim full citizenship, justice, and
women historically have had responsibility only for political participation (Lister 2003, 103; Okin 1989;
persons with whom they have emotional relationships; Phillips 1991)—that is, until unpaid care counts as a
by contrast, the execution of Weberian duties and form of civic engagement (Herd and Meyer 2002).
obligations requires one to execute duties independent
of one’s feelings about those duties or the person for Data and Methodology
whom they are being performed (Blum 1982). Thus, The data for this project were collected during Phase
commitment to public service is understood as a II of the National Administrative Studies Project
culturally masculine construct because it implies a (NASP-II). The sampling frame consisted of managers
single-minded pursuit of life in the public realm working in information management activities at the
(largely male dominated), to the exclusion of life in state level in health and human service agencies.
the private realm (largely female dominated). Primary human service agencies were identified
Feminist theorists have made a similar assertion, according to the definition used by the American
noting the culturally masculine overtones of citizen- Public Human Services Association (APHSA) and
ship as it is traditionally construed (Lister 2003; included agencies housing programs related to
Stivers 2002). Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families,
and child welfare. Information management was
Though the argument may sound antiquated, women broadly defined to include a range of key managerial
still bear the lion’s share of housework and caregiving roles, such as the top program administrator, manag-
(Bianchi et al. 2000; Cancian and Oliker 2000; ers of information system applications, managers in
Coltrane 2000; Kroska 2004; Lee and Waite 2005; charge of evaluation and research, and managers deal-
Voydanoff and Donnelly 1999). And even though ing with public information and communication. The
both women and men now participate in the public sampling frame was developed with the aid of the
and private realms, evidence indicates that for women 2001 APHSA directory, the most widely used direc-
(more so than men), time invested in one sphere is tory of human service agency managers. Application
spent at the expense of the other sphere (Blair-Loy of the study criteria resulted in a sampling frame of
2001; Mennino, Rubin, and Brayfield 2005; Sanchez 570 managers from the 50 states and Washington,
and Thompson 1997). So although women have made D.C. Given the small size of the sampling frame, a
great strides in participating in both realms of life and decision was made to administer the survey to the
gender attitudes have become more egalitarian over entire sampling frame (i.e., conduct a census).
time (Rice and Coats 1995; Kozimer-King and Leicht
1999; Mason and Lu 1988), women are still less likely The survey-implementation process sought to mini-
than men to be able to devote themselves to public mize nonresponse to both the survey and specific
life alone (Stivers 2002, 93). Accordingly, we expect questionnaire items. Thus, the study employed
that Dillman’s (2000) comprehensive
tailored design method to maxi-
H3: Public managers who are One could argue that women mize the response rate. This
women will be less likely to should register a higher com- approach includes (1) a question-
indicate a commitment to
mitment to public service given naire with well-designed content;
public service than public (2) a survey questionnaire that is
managers who are men. their historical participation in formatted in accordance with the
civic issues that have shaped the latest thinking in cognitive re-
One could argue that women construction of the public search; (3) multiple personalized
should register a higher commit- administration field. contacts, each contact including
ment to public service given a carefully crafted message to
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation 877
 encourage the respondent to complete the survey
questionnaire; and (4) the use of real stamps on return
envelopes and such features as a pre-notice letter, fax
message, and phone call at key points in the survey
administration, as well as the use of special delivery (a
combination of two-day delivery by Airborne Express
and U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail).
The data-collection phase of the study began in fall
2002. First, sample members were sent an alert letter
informing them about the study and requesting their
cooperation in completing a questionnaire to be
mailed later. Approximately a week after the initial
alert letter, the survey questionnaire was mailed to the
sample. The cover letter accompanying the survey
questionnaire outlined the study objectives, indicated
the voluntary nature of the study, requested participa-
tion, and provided contact details for the project
director for further informational needs and clarifica-
tion. About 10 days later, a combination thank you/
reminder postcard was sent to all respondents, thank-
ing those who had responded and encouraging those
who had not to respond as soon as they possibly
could. Nearly a month after mailing this postcard, a
new cover letter and replacement survey were sent to
nonrespondents. The cover letter emphasized the fact
that it was important for everyone to respond (unless
for some reason or other the respondent chose not to
respond). To ensure that target participants were aware
of the second mailing, we also faxed the second mail-
ing’s cover letter to nonrespondents. The final step in
survey administration took place about two months
later, when nonrespondents were sent a new cover
letter and a second replacement survey with a request
to complete the survey. This final mailing pointed out
that it was the final opportunity to complete the sur-
vey questionnaire and used a combination of two-day
delivery by an express carrier and U.S. Postal Service
Priority Mail. By the time survey administration con-
cluded in winter 2003, a total of 274 responses had
been received, a 53 percent response rate.
Some elaboration on the sample is in order. Even
though we targeted information management person-
nel, we employed a broad definition of information
management, including not only those who manage
information systems applications but also managers
involved in research and evaluation, managers dealing
with public information and communication, and top-
level program administrators. Our respondents thus
included both program and operations managers, as
well as those serving in a range of staff functions. Such
a broad definition of information management is con-
sistent with prior usage (e.g., Caudle 1990). The aver-
age age of the managers we surveyed was approximately
50 years, and almost half were women. The average
length of stay in the organization was more than 15
years, and the average salary was between $50,000 and
$75,000. This demographic description is more consis-
878 Public Administration Review • November | December 2006
tent with our expectations for a typical career manager
in a health and human service agency, not the stereo-
typical image of information technology staff as peripa-
tetic young males who frequently change employment.
Of the 274 respondents, 114 had line responsibilities
for managing programs, and the rest performed staff
functions. It should be noted, however, that even the
managers performing staff functions were senior man-
agers operating in a large agency; they were respon-
sible for providing both operational and strategic
support on an ongoing basis for a wide range of orga-
nizational operations.
Public Service Motivation Measures
Public service motivation was measured based on
scales of survey items designed by Perry (1996). Three
types of public service motivation served as dependent
variables: attraction to policy making, compassion,
and commitment to public interest.
Attraction to policy making was measured as the reverse
sum of the survey participant’s level of agreement with
three questions, all of which took the form of a
Likert-type scale ranging from “strongly disagree”
(1) to “strongly agree” (5):
• “Politics is a dirty word.”
• “The give and take of public policy making does
not appeal to me.”
• “I don’t care much for politicians.”
The Cronbach’s alpha, which measures scale reliability
from 0 to 1, was 0.72 for this scale. This score com-
pares well with Perry’s (1997) 0.77 correlation among
the same survey items.
Compassion was measured as the sum of the survey
participant’s level of agreement with three of Perry’s
eight original Likert-type items measuring compassion
(1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree):
• “It is difficult for me to contain my feelings
when I see people in distress.”
• “I am often reminded by daily events how
dependent we are on one another.”
• “I have little compassion for people in need who
are unwilling to take the first step to help
themselves” (reversed).
The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.55, com-
pared with the 0.72 achieved by Perry (1997) using all
eight items.4
Commitment to public service was measured by sum-
ming four Likert-type items from the five-item Perry
scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree):
• “I consider public service my civic duty.”
• “Meaningful public service is very important to me.”
 • “I unselfishly contribute to my community.”
• “I would prefer seeing public officials do what is
best for the whole community even if it harmed my
interests.”
Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was 0.68, compared to
0.69 in the Perry (1997) study.
The independent variable of interest was gender,
coded 0 for men and 1 for women. Five control vari-
ables were included. Education represented the highest
level of education completed by the survey partici-
pant; it was coded 0 for some college, 1 for bachelor’s
degree, or 2 for graduate degree. Professionalization,
adapted from Aiken and Hage (1968), ranged from 0
to 4 and summed the dichotomous responses (no = 0,
yes = 1) to the following question and three
statements:
• “Are you member of a professional society (e.g.,
ASPA, APHSA, APHA, AMA, ANA etc.)?”
• “I attended most meetings of the professional
society in the last two years.”
• “I am an officeholder in the professional society.
• “I have made presentations at recent professional
society meetings.”
Public sector experience represented a respondent’s
experience working in the public sector, calculated by
dividing the number of years of experience in the
public sector by the respondent’s age. Race was coded
0 for white or 1 for Hispanic, black, Asian, or “other.”
Income, a categorical variable, was coded 1 for earn-
ings of less than $50,000 per year, 2 for earnings of
$50,000–$75,000 per year, 3 for earnings of
$75,000–$100,000 per year, 4 for earnings of
$100,000–$150,000 per year, or 5 for earnings of
$150,000 or more per year.
Of these control variables, women and men differed
statistically only on age and income. The women in
the sample averaged 48 years of age versus the men’s
average age of 52 years. Women, on average, indicated
earnings closer to the $50,000–$75,000 dollar range,
whereas men indicated average earnings closer to the
$75,000–$100,000 range. (An ordinary least squares
regression on income indicated that gender did not
significantly influence income when age and educa-
tion were accounted for).
Model and Results
The statistical method used to examine these pro-
posed hypotheses, ordered logistic (or “ordered
logit”) regression, accounts for the fact that the de-
pendent variables do not meet the key ordinary least
squares regression assumption of a continuous and
normally distributed dependent variable. This is
because the distances between adjacent categories on
the survey items comprised by the public service
motivation measures are expected to vary across
survey respondents. Ordered logit is a maximum
likelihood estimation technique that addresses this
problem by assuming the dependent variable follows
a latent continuous rather than an actual continuous
distribution (see Long 1997, 114–47). A series of
diagnostic checks, including the correlation matrix
presented in table 1 and an examination of the indi-
vidual variable distributions, indicates that these data
meet the ordered logit model’s basic assumptions.
Efficient estimation of ordered logit also demands
that the data adhere to the “proportional odds” as-
sumption, or the claim that the independent vari-
ables have roughly the same effect on the likelihood
of each dependent variable outcome. The Brandt test
(Brandt 1990) indicates this assumption generally
holds for each of the independent variables in all
three models.5
The ordered logit regression estimates for the three
models are reported in table 2. Although ordered logit
does not produce an overall model fit measure that is
directly comparable to the R2 measure associated with
traditional ordinary least squares regression, the
pseudo R2 measures suggest these models have modest
explanatory power, and the compassion motivation
model is the best fit of the three. Race and income
appear to have no statistically significant effect in any
of the models, and public sector experience is only
marginally significant in the commitment to public
interest model. Although these are necessary control
variables, it is clear they have no notable direct effect

Table 1 Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelations

Mean SD Min. Max. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Attraction to policy making 9.66 2.74 3 15 1
2. Compassion 10.99 1.77 4 15 −.03 1
3. Commitment to public interest 15.38 2.56 5 20 .20 .30 1
4. Gender .47 — 0 1 .10 .18 −.03 1
5. Education 1.38 .68 0 2 .16 .01 .18 −.06 1
6. Professionalism 1.18 1.41 0 4 .17 .14 .23 −.08 .21 1
7. Race .16 .37 0 1 .02 .01 .04 −.08 −.19 −.00 1
8. Income 3.68 .90 1 5 −.05 −.04 −.04 .07 −.03 −.02 .12 1
9. Organization age .30 .20 .01 .64 −.10 .04 −.10 .01 −.05 .01 −.03 .12 1

Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation 879

 Table 2 Ordered Logit Estimates of Public Service Motivators

Attraction to Policy Making Compassion Commitment to Public Interest

Coef. Avg. ⌬ Coef. Avg. ⌬ Coef. Avg. ⌬
(std. error) in Odds p > |z| (std. error) in Odds p > |z| (std. error) in Odds p > |z|
Gender .453 (.233) 1.28 .052 .720 (.236) 1.57 .002 .063 (.197) 1.04 .748
Education .535 (.180) 1.09 .003 .113 (.210) .94 .589 .395 (.197) .76 .045
Professionalism .184 (.068) 1.29 .007 .226 (.086) 1.34 .009 .325 (.089) 1.59 .000
Race .209 (.328) 1.07 .524 .151 (.250) 1.42 .547 .172 (.387) 1.07 .657
Income –.121 (.126) .90 .334 –.110 (.091) .92 .227 –.085 (.117) .94 .468
Organization age –.740 (.544) .85 .174 .398 (.516) .99 .441 –1.06 (.543) .80 .051
Wald ␹2 (df, p > ␹2) 24.71 (6, .000) 17.66 (6, .007) 27.23 (6, .000)
2
Pseudo R .083 .066 .105
(McKelvey and Zavonia)

on individual attitudes toward these particular public which each independent variable was held at its mean
service motivations. value and gender was assigned a value of either 0 or 1.
As table 3 shows, the general trend for compassion is
Education and professionalism, by contrast, are that males are more likely to report lower levels of
important predictors of public service motivation. compassion, whereas females are more likely to report
The magnitude of those effects can be better under- higher levels of compassion. Those effects were stron-
stood by examining how changes in the independent gest at both the “weak moderate” level, at which males
variables affected respondents’ predicted scores on were 8 percent more likely to report, and the “strong
each of the public service motivation scales. Those moderate” level,” at which females were 7 percent
effects are presented in table 2, which reports the more likely to report.
effect of an increase in each independent variable
from its mean to 1 standard deviation above its mean There is also evidence of gender-based differences in
on the odds that a respondent will score higher on attraction to policy making, although that evidence
each of the public service motivation scales. Odds contradicts our expectations and is not as strong as the
above 1 suggest that a higher motivation score is findings for compassion. In this case, the regression
more likely, and odds below 1 suggest that a stronger coefficient shows that females were 28 percent more
motivation score is less likely. In the model of attrac- likely to report a stronger attraction to policy making
tion to policy making, for example, an increase in than men, but that relationship was only marginally
the professionalism index from just over 1 to just significant at the .052 level. In terms of predicted
over 3 increased the likelihood of a respondent re- probabilities, females were only 3 percent more likely
porting a stronger attraction to policy making by 29 to strongly agree that they were attracted to policy
percent. For the compassion model, that change was making, and males were only 1 percent to 2 percent
even stronger—34 percent. By comparison, an in-
crease in education from its average of 1.38 to its
Table 3 Predicted Probabilities of Public Service Motivation
highest value of 2 resulted in a 9 percent increase in Outcomes by Gender (Percent)
the likelihood of a respondent reporting a stronger
Males Females
attraction to policy making. Somewhat surprisingly,
that same increase in education decreased the likeli- Attraction to policy making
hood of a stronger compassion motivation by ap- Weak 14 12
Weak moderate 13 12
proximately 6 percent (or 1 minus the reported
Moderate 15 15
change in odds of 0.94).6 Strong moderate 9 11
Strong 12 15
The results offer mixed support for our hypotheses. A Very strong 6 8
respondent’s gender was shown to be a significant Compassion
predictor of his or her reported levels of both attrac- Weak 5 2
tion to policy making and compassion. The results Weak moderate 19 11
Moderate 19 14
were strongest for compassion, where gender was
Strong moderate 21 21
statistically significant, and its coefficient indicates Strong 19 26
women were 57 percent more likely than men to score Very strong 8 13
higher on the compassion index. These results are
Note: Weak scores are 1 standard deviation below the mean;
further illustrated in table 3, which compares the weak moderate scores are 0.5 standard deviation below the
predicted probabilities of each compassion outcome mean; moderate scores are at the mean; strong moderate
by gender. These probabilities were calculated by scores are 0.5 standard deviation above the mean; and strong
examining the ordered logit model predictions in scores are 1 standard deviation above the mean.

880 Public Administration Review • November | December 2006

more likely to report a weaker attraction to policy
making. Therefore, although these differences are
statistically significant and contrary to our expecta-
tions, they can be said to lack substantive significance.
Discussion
Scholars have suggested that public administration
discourse is dominated by male imagery, particularly
in the language that defends public administration’s
existence (Stivers 2002), maintains its hierarchical
power relationships (Ferguson 1984), and characterizes
Weberian bureaucracy (Duerst-Lahti and Johnson
1990, 1992). This study has sought to explore gender
dimensions in the most sophisticated measure of
public service motivation, a research scale developed
by Perry (1996) that is increasingly being used for
practical and scholarly purposes. We expected, based
on gender studies in a variety of social science fields,
to find gender differences in public managers’ re-
sponses to a survey questionnaire dealing with three of
Perry’s public service motivation dimensions: compas-
sion, on which we expected women to score higher;
attraction to policy making, on which we expected
men to score higher; and commitment to the public
interest, on which we also expected higher scores from
men. Ordered logit modeling supports the compas-
sion hypothesis but fails to support the hypothesis
regarding commitment to public interest and contra-
dicts the attraction to policy making hypothesis, with
women scoring higher than men on that measure.
That female public managers registered higher com-
passion scores supports both the stereotype and the
scholarship on women’s proclivities toward concern
for others. But one must wonder whether the compas-
sion result indicates that female public managers are
really more compassionate, on average, than their
male counterparts. Could it be that male public man-
agers are simply more reluctant to register such moti-
vations given their culturally feminine nature? As
Stivers notes, “Theorists may extol the virtues of the
responsive, caring bureaucrat who serves the public
interest, but the argument will face uphill sledding
until we recognize that responsiveness, caring, and
service are culturally feminine qualities and that, in
public administration, we are ambivalent about them
for that very reason” (2002, 57–58). Despite the lack
of room for compassion in public administration
theory, significant outcomes in street-level bureau-
cracy are determined by the degree of compassion a
caseworker feels for the client (Maynard-Moody and
Musheno 2003; Roth 1972; Scott and Pandey 2000).
Better understanding of the gender dimensions of
compassion and greater acceptance of compassion can
be used fruitfully to improve bureaucratic
responsiveness.
Regarding the public interest dimension of public
service motivation, perhaps the original hypothesis
was antiquated in its assumption that female public
managers would feel reluctant to perceive work out-
side the home as a central life focus and primary duty.
After all, rigid sex roles are on the decline as the num-
ber of double-income families rises (McGlen 2002;
Brooks and Bolzendahl 2004). Beyond the division of
household chores, gender norms are gradually loosen-
ing, with more traits being considered gender neutral
(Duerst-Lahti and Johnson 1992, 143). However,
these arguments do not negate the preponderance of
evidence that women perform more unpaid domestic
labor than men (Cancian and Oliker 2000; Coltrane
2000; Kroska 2004; Lee and Waite 2005; Voydanoff
and Donnelly 1999). Given the inflexible nature of
time, with only 24 hours in a day, a disproportionate
devotion to one sphere by definition minimizes par-
ticipation in the other (Baxter, Hewitt, and Western
2005; Kelly et al. 1991; Sanchez and Thomson 1997).
The validity of questions regarding women’s reluctance
to acknowledge work as a primary life duty is sup-
ported by research on the gender dimensions of job–
family trade-offs and work–family “balancing”
(Hattery 2001; Maushart 1999; Mennino and
Brayfield 2005). Finally, it was not long ago that
Perry (1997) detected female respondents scoring
lower on this measure than their male counterparts.
Additional research is needed to determine whether
commitment to public interest is a truly a gender-
neutral motivation.
That women scored higher on attraction to policy
making is both surprising and intriguing, and this
finding contradicts the construal of politics as a defin-
ing feature of masculinity (Stivers 2000, 89).7 Maybe
cultural norms that discourage women’s involvement
in policy making have faded over time more rapidly
than we have recognized. Alternatively, attraction to
policy making may resonate with women more than
men because it requires “responsiveness,” a culturally
feminine quality (Stivers 2002). Or perhaps politics is
still a culturally masculine domain to which women
have adapted.
In interpreting the results, it should be acknowledged
that our sample was drawn from redistributive agen-
cies. Although these agencies are more rule bound
than others—and thus do not provide as many oppor-
tunities for policy making (Newman 1994; Ripley and
Franklin 1987)—they operate in policy realms that
provide health and social services, which have histori-
cally been viewed as a female preserve (Kelly et al.
1991; Newman 1994). Given the significant presence
of women in these agencies, we could be witnessing
the behavioral effects of gender balance, in which
both women and men feel less constrained by cultural
expectations. Kanter (1977) suggests that a balanced
proportion of people in different social categories
could result in behavioral and cultural changes. Given
some evidence that higher proportions of women alter
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation 881
 organizational dynamics (Pazy and Oron 2001; Yoder,
Crumpton, and Zipp 1989), perhaps it should be no
surprise that the sample’s women were more attracted
to policy making, that the sample’s men were willing
to register moderate compassion, and that there were
no gender differences in proclaimed commitment to
civic duty.8
A comment on the use of biological sex to measure
gender is in order. Although gender is construed in
many ways (Butler 1999), this study has borrowed a
widely used definition of gender pertaining to cultur-
ally constructed expectations for the behavior and
roles of women and men (Burrell and Hearn 1989, 2).
The use of biological sex to measure gender, aside
from providing analytical ease, is consistent with the
close interrelationship between sex and gender (Acker
1992, 251; Burrell and Hearn 1989, 2), particularly
given that one’s biological sex determines the societal
messages one receives about appropriate roles and
behavior. Measuring gender as biological sex is a
common methodological choice, but it is one that
has been intensely debated (Cresswell 2003; Hood-
Williams 1996, 1997; Laner 2000, 2003; Willmott
1996). This discourse includes scholars who argue that
biological sex and gender are distinct, with the former
pertaining to anatomy and the latter the social con-
struction (Laner 2000, 2003; Oakley 1972), and
others who argue that the two concepts cannot be
separated in any meaningful way (Cresswell 2003;
Hood-Williams 1996, 1997). Another approach
argues that biological sex is not nearly as effective as
sex-role orientation in explaining behavior (King
2000, 73). From this perspective, women and men
have attributes that can be classified on a feminine–
masculine continuum, and where they fall on this
continuum helps to explain organizational outcomes
such as mentoring success (Scandura and Ragins
1993). Thus, in choosing to measure gender using
biological sex, at best, we may be explaining less vari-
ance than if we measured gender more directly; at
worst, we are misrepresenting reality and perpetuating
false dichotomies about women and men (Ferguson
1984, 28; Kelly and Duerst-Lahti 2000, 55).
It should also be noted that the study hypotheses call
on two literatures that have been contested by strands
of feminist thought. First, the literature that divides
life into public and private spheres, some have argued,
uses an artificial categorization that continues wom-
en’s political subordination by precluding private
issues from becoming public concerns (Okin 1989;
Pateman 1988; Phillips 1991). In response, we con-
tend that the ideology of separate spheres is still has
an enormous influence on family patterns, citizen
rights, and workplace arrangements (Cancian and
Oliker 2000, 8) and thus justifies its inclusion as an
organizing framework. Second, we rely on difference
feminism (under which Chodorow and Gilligan are
882 Public Administration Review • November | December 2006
categorized), which asserts basic differences between
the sexes (be they biological, cultural, psychological,
or social) and their influence on women’s social reali-
ties. This approach is contested by diversity feminists,
who argue that difference feminism fails to adequately
theorize differences among women, particularly with
regard to race, class, and sexuality (Dietz 2003).
Though diversity feminism offers an important alter-
native perspective, we note that difference feminism
dominates American academic theorizing (Dietz 2003)
and has been used in recent public administration
studies (Fox and Schuhmann 1999; Meier, O’Toole,
and Goerdel 2006).
At a minimum, these results suggest that the public
service motivation concept devised by Perry and Wise
contains gender dimensions that should be acknowl-
edged when used by scholars and practitioners alike.
But if public service motivation is to be used as
others have suggested—including predicting candi-
dates for public service and evaluating organizational
effectiveness—much research is needed to continue
this line of inquiry. For example, the results require
replication in public settings beyond state health and
human service agencies and beyond managers work-
ing in information technology. Also, a richer set of
public service motivation measures should be used,
including the self-sacrifice items and all public com-
mitment measures, not just a subset.
Conclusion
What is the value of our findings on gender dimen-
sions of the public service motivation concept?
Duerst-Lahti and Johnson (1990, 1992) suggest that
public organizations may actually be more culturally
masculine than other organizational types given the
influence of the manly Weberian bureaucracy and its
undervaluation of the cultural feminine. Therefore, a
conceptualization of public service motivation that
encompasses both male and female dimensions pro-
vides an opportunity to redress this imbalance.
For these findings to matter, however, it is necessary to
further explore and better understand the substantive
importance of the public service motivation concept.
There is some emerging evidence suggesting that
public service motivation matters to the performance
of organizational roles. Public service motivation is
important to organizations that serve public purposes
because it provides opportunities to connect indi-
vidual motivation with broader organizational pur-
poses (Moynihan and Pandey, forthcoming; Perry and
Wise 1990). Moreover, research on the positive effects
of public service motivation on a variety of individual
and organizational outcomes is beginning to accumu-
late (e.g., Brewer and Selden 1998; Crewson 1997;
Scott and Pandey 2005). Despite the accumulation of
evidence to this effect, our understanding of underly-
ing mechanisms is in a preliminary stage at best.
For example, Scott and Pandey (2005) note that there
is little reason to believe that any given dimension of
public service motivation has similar effects on street-
level personnel who must interact with clients on a
day-to-day basis and middle managers who may oper-
ate almost entirely within an organizational context.
In this paper, we have provided additional evidence
about the differences between women and men on
public service motivation. These differences matter to
the extent that they become manifest in the work
setting. Therefore, if attraction to policy making is
deemed valuable for certain organizational roles,
efforts to better understand the organizational and
social factors that interact with gender can only im-
prove individual and organizational effectiveness.
Obtaining such an understanding and perhaps acting
on it is, after all, a far better alternative than letting
intended or unintended gender segregation in occupa-
tions and organizations play out unhindered.
Despite our “activist” inclinations, we recognize that
the state of knowledge about the gender dimensions
of public service motivation is rudimentary at best.
Thus, if we desire future developments and real-world
applications of gender in human resource or other
organizational functions, it seems wise to first focus
on developing a better and more nuanced understand-
ing of the role that gender plays. We hope that such
developments will be forthcoming in the near future.
Acknowledgment
The data analyzed in this article were collected under
the auspices of the National Administrative Studies
Project (NASP-II), a project that was supported in
part by the Forum for Policy Research and Public
Service at Rutgers University and under a grant from
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to the Center
for State Health Policy at Rutgers University. Natu-
rally, this support does not imply an endorsement of
the analyses and opinions presented herein.
Notes
1. One could make the counterargument that some
public servants are not attracted to policy making
and, in fact, eschew the policy realm as an exten-
sion of the politics–administration dichotomy.
2. Both nature and nurture arguments have been
critiqued for assuming fundamental differences
between women and men and thus legitimating
inequalities and obscuring other differences, such
as class, race, sexuality, ethnicity, and age, that may
matter more (see Kimmel 2000 for an overview).
3. According to these perspectives, compassion makes
for inconsistent, unreliable, and capricious decision
making because it departs from the universal in
favor of the particular.
4. This alpha score is admittedly low relative to our
other public service motivation measures, as well as
general conventions about acceptable levels of scale
reliability. Nonetheless, our views on the implica-
tions of this low reliability score are consistent with
Pedhazur and Schmelkin (1991, 100–110), who
argue convincingly that reliability measures should
be interpreted with respect to the research question
at hand, not some predefined minimum standard.
In this case, because our empirical analysis was
designed to build on previous findings and identify
general trends in the relationships between com-
passion and other variables rather than to make a
definitive statement about how to measure com-
passion, we feel the low alpha score does not
detract from or call into question our core find-
ings. That said, we recognize that a low reliability
score can be indicative of multidimensionality,
high levels of random measurement error, and
other issues, and therefore, we recognize that our
findings regarding compassion should be inter-
preted with caution. We encourage future work in
this area to more carefully explore the implications
of different measurement strategies for
compassion.
5. The single exception to this finding was gender.
Substantively, this suggests gender has a dispropor-
tionate effect on the likelihood that responses will
fall into different categories of the dependent
variable. This was especially true for the compas-
sion model, in which, as we discuss, women were
much more likely than men to score in the highest
categories. But because gender was the only excep-
tion to the parallel regression assumption, and
because that finding is consistent with our theo-
retical assumptions, we decided against an alterna-
tive ordered logit specification that would relax the
parallel regression assumption.
6. According to an anonymous reviewer, recent trends
in the literature suggest that gender’s effect on
public service motivation might be conditioned by
an individual’s rank within his or her organization.
We explored this possibility by reestimating each
of the regression models with a new interaction
term between gender and income that provided a
rough but reasonable proxy for rank. That interac-
tion term was not statistically significant in either
the civic duty or attraction to policy making
models. It was statistically significant at the 90
percent confidence level in the compassion model,
but its substantive effects were weak. Specifically,
those estimates suggested that the highest-paid
females were 3 percent to 5 percent less likely than
the lowest-paid females to score highly on the
compassion index. The lack of substantive signifi-
cance, coupled with our concerns about multidi-
mensionality within the compassion measure,
prohibited us from further exploring this relation-
ship. Nonetheless, the interaction of gender and
rank is compelling from both a conceptual and
empirical standpoint, and it should be further
explored in future work.
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation 883
 7. Attraction to policy making is a curious dimension
of public service motivation given that the public
administration field was launched (arguably, Svara
1998) from the assumption of a “politics–adminis-
tration dichotomy” that separated the workings of
elected officials from bureaucrats. Though the
politics–administration dichotomy was empirically
discredited long ago, there is still evidence that
professional and highly educated public servants
desire to be buffered from the fickle winds of politics.
8. Given women’s historical involvement in health and
human service agencies, as well as their proportional
representation as employees, we could have inverted
our hypotheses to argue that cultural expectations
of motivation by gender would not apply. However,
the lack of theoretical and empirical evidence on
gender balance led us to reject such an approach.
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