# I. Introduction oes women representation in bureaucratic service make any difference in creating value for the women in broad society as well as women in the public service workforce? Does women's presence in bureaucratic leadership positions create any impact in developing gender-friendly policies? Answers to the questions can measure the value of women representation in bureaucratic power. Social equality and inclusiveness issues are not only concerned with political context but also carrying significant meaning in public service management. Hence representative bureaucracy has increasingly captured attention as a significant issue in the field of public administration (Andrews, Groeneveld, Meier, and Schröter, 2016) Theory of representative bureaucracy advocates that demographically diverse public service employees tend to support and implement the policies that protect the interest of the representative groups, where they belong in a society. Affirmative action, such as a quota system is widely used tool for achieving representative bureaucracy. Opponents of affirmative action and representative bureaucracy policy think that preservation of quota policy is an unfair practice that will undermine the public service capacity. Moreover, representative bureaucrats may not produce effective outcomes as the performance not only depends on the service provider; other institutional factors are also responsible. So, there are mixed findings in the literature. Compare to other services, the responsibility of civil service is different because the objective is to develop the socio-economic status of people by rendering public goods and services as well as economic growth. Psychological attachment to the client is more important to understand the factual situation for better service and policy development. Therefore, increasing gender representation in public service has a positive impact in developing genderfriendly policies and enhancing women' status in society by an active image of the female officers. On the other perspective increasing gender representation may change the organizational environment conducive for women employees and develop an inclusive and diverse workforce. Presence of women in higher position tends to advocate and support human resource management policies that consider women issues. Therefore, increasing the share of female bureaucrats in a higher rank of public administration may help to make public service more attractive for talented women and developing women efficiency through women-friendly and non-discriminated working environment. The objective of the study is to understand the importance of female representation in public service. For this purpose, the study has tried to answer the following questions: The information of the study is based on the secondary data published as scholarly articles and organizations' reports and the study does not empirically test the propositions with reliable statistical tools. # IV. Representative Bureaucracy All modern governments have large scale administrative units, and within them, ministries, agencies, departments, bureaus and so forth are called "bureaucracies". The bureaucrats are responsible for developing and implementing public policies for the betterment of people and society. They also influence many public programs and initiatives by their discretion and active participation during the implementation process (Dolan& Rosenbloom, 2015). However, Weber (as cited in Dolan & Rosenbloom, 2015) developed the classic view of the bureaucrat as without discretion; "single cog in an evermoving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixed route of march". According to his theory the ideal bureaucracy will follow hierarchical, formal and impersonal organizational behavior. On the other hand, contemporary representative bureaucracy scholars emphasize that individual bureaucrats can have a significant impact on administrative choices and their acceptance by the general population or specific segments of it (Dolan & Rosenbloom, 2015). Lip set (as cited in Dolan & Rosenbloom, 2015), one of the first scholars who denied the neutrality of civil servants and criticized the political scientists for ignoring the social background and attitudes of government bureaucrats as their social value indeed affect governmental decision making and policy implementation. For responsible decision making traditional external controls from institutions and politics are insufficient, an interaction between external and internal (values and psychology) control can generate ethical response and representative bureaucracy acts as a control mechanism only within the broader network of external control and additional internal controls (Meire, 1975). The existence of Bureaucratic discretion can delinquently affect democratic governance as bureaucrats are unelected and not directly accountable for their decisions (Finer, 1941;Friedrich, 1940 (as cited in Marvel & Resh, 2015).Moreover, unrepresentative power may hamper the rights of the general public. Thus, representative bureaucracy can solve the problem by treating bureaucratic discretion as a positive way.For establishing democracy, bureaucracies must be representative of the groups they serve (Kingsley, as cited in Dolan & Rosenbloom, 2015) and the administrative and political office holders should work as spokesmen of the broad social group (Krislov,1974).It is possible to reconcile both democratic accountability and bureaucratic discretion when a bureaucracy mirrors the public in demographic traits. # V. How does Gender Representative Bureaucracy Work: Mosher (as cited in Dolan & Rosenbloom, 2015) claimed that a bureaucracy can show passive and active representation. First, when an organization includes individuals as bureaucrats in its hierarchy from specified groups such as women and ethnic minorities, passive representation occurs. Thus, passive representation occurs when the Bureaucrats and population share similar demographic characteristics such as race, sex, age, social class. Contemporary scholars in the representative bureaucracy theory focus mainly on race and gender, and almost half of the work is related to gender where, gender representative bureaucracy establishes passive representation by employing women in proportionate share with the country population (Kennedy, 2014). In public administration, academicians have focused on representative bureaucracy by measuring precisely how and at what extent passive representation occurs across government departments and agencies, the actual and perceived benefits as well as the determinants of passive representation.Representative bureaucracy may be a remedial measure in the context of social inequality that hinders to successfully delivering public service and implementing public policy by managing the people in society (Krislov, 1974). Cayer & Sigel man (1980) showed the status of minorities and women in American state and local government with the effect of equal employment and affirmative action program during 1973 to 1975 through analyzing the representative ratio by comparing the percentage of women and minority in government workforce with the percentage of women and minorities in the total population. The study revealed that the representation should increase not only in overall workforce composition but also in different functional level and area for implementing the EEO and affirmative action plan. To identify what determines female representation in federal agencies Cornwell and Kellough (1994) # assumed that agency mission to The study has focused on the importance of gender representation in public service by following the scholarly contributions available in the academic journal. Depending on descriptive research, the study has tried to answer the above questions by logically analyzing the findings of peer-reviewed journals diversity might influence in women representation in agency workforce and the panel data regression model supports the assumption. Evidence showed that women representation is higher in the agencies which have a larger budget in the area to redress social and economic inequity. Though passive representation does not ensure democratic decision making, but the symbolic value of passive representation has significant influence for social democracy (Mosher, as cited in Dolan& Rosenbloom, 2015). That means balanced, and representative gender composition in public workforce may show the sign of legitimized government as well as fair and equal treatment inhuman resource management practice. In addition to the symbolic effect, passive representation produces substantive benefits through direct and indirect ways. Minority bureaucrats' partiality, shared values, beliefs, and empathetic understanding are the direct sources of creating substantive benefits for the representative group. For example, Female bureaucrats can directly produce substantive benefits by their administrative behavior as well as formulating policies. It means that female bureaucrats will response to protect the interest of female in society and organization. Moreover, due to their shared values, attitude, and experiences, they will not ignore female issues while developing and implementing policies. On the other hand, female bureaucrats can indirectly support their group by changing the manner of male bureaucrats and female clients by checking the existence of abusive behavior, preventing the occurrence of such kind of behavior and developing a culture of resocialization of other bureaucrats by highlighting gender sensitive issues (Lim, 2006). Thus Passive representation leads to active representation where bureaucrats act to further the needs of a particular group of people (Meier & Bohte 2001).Though active representation has been criticized with the feature of bureaucratic partiality, but substantive benefits from representative bureaucracy can crowd out the loss of soft spot in active representation (Lim, 2006). Overall passive representation is not enough to increase active representation, hierarchical representation and organizational structure also play important role indiscretionary behavior(Keiser, Wilkins, Meier, & Holland, 2002). # a) Gender representative bureaucracy to deliver substantive benefits to the society The study has focused on the effects of gender representative bureaucracy to the society through the wellbeing of female in two different contexts. One is social benefits driving by gender-sensitive policy development as well as rendering women-friendly public services, and the other one is organizational context facilities developed by introducing women-friendly human resource management policies and practices that change the attitude to create gender-sensitive working environment. # i. Social Context Representative bureaucracy helps to promote diversity within the public organization that works to foster social equity throughout the nation. Even mere passive representation (symbolic representation) can help to change citizen attitude and create a trustable relationship where bureaucrat acts as legitimate actor in the political process with the power to shape the policies supportive for the social group (Selden,1997a). The government can promote bureaucratic accountability to empower and enlighten women in the society through increasing women representation in civil service (Riccucci & Van Ryzin, 2017). Studies found that female teachers have significant power to change the gender stereotype beliefs among girls and they try to inspire girls to learn more so that there is a positive effect of having female teachers to girls' educational achievement as well as social and mental development (Gong & Song, 2018;Song,2018). Andrews and Miller (2013) found that increasing women representation in police service with superior authority and opportunities leads to increase the rate of domestic violence arrests that could be significantly improved the quality of life for women who are victims of domestic violence. Meier and Nicholson-Crotty (2006) also found a positive association between the number of female police officers and the number of sexual assault reporting and arrests. Hence female police officers tend to exercise discretion in policy formulation and active representation by implementing policies as they have shared values and experiences with the victims as Women. Since women have different life experiences, they will make decisions differently than their male colleagues, and that may help to make a better environment for women. So that When the percentage of women leaders increases in a government agency, women executives are most likely to implement female friendly attitude and it is more visible in the office devoted to women's issues (Dolan, 2000). Furthermore, focusing on government spending Dolan (2002) found that female executives are likely to shape internal budget strategies and decisions in the ways that incorporate women's perspectives and the decision-making frequency is more visible where females hold secured larger representation in the agency's leadership ranks. Park (2012) found that the rate of Women's' issues coverage in news and media positively related to the hierarchical positions hold by women bureaucrats. Moreover, the ratio of social welfare budget is positively related to the ratio of female bureaucrats. The situation helps to create social awareness related to women empowerment that ultimately helps to improve government performance by delivering better quality service. One study conducted jointly by McKinsey and UNDP (2017) found a positive relationship between female participation in public administration and economic development. The study also showed that female participation in public service positively correlated with gender equality in society and gender equality in occupation. Moreover, it found that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between gender equality in public administration and the delivery of certain basic public service such as education, healthcare, and sanitation services. Therefore, it is apparent that women's' equal participation in the public service workforce as well as in leadership position may create a conducive environment for fostering effective government by delivering gender-responsive public service. # ii. Organizational context Opportunities, power, and numbers are the significant three different features that differentiate men from women in working environment while the consequence of high and low numerical representation, high and low opportunities, and high and low power affect public administration and program implementation. Higher opportunity develops higher aspiration and mobility to career development while officers with top power boost group moral, flexible in behaviour and more cooperative. Numerical presentation is also important when it creates noticeable differences. Gender with small proportional representation tends to be more visible, feel more pressure to conform and making a mistake is more noticeable where they feel isolated and excluded from the informal network. On the contrary higher representation makes people fit and increase credibility in position (Kanter, 1977). For career advancement both women and men follow mentors but when women are underrepresented in senior level, it adversely affects female civil servants. Studies show that there is a trickledown effect of female representation at top hierarchy, which means increasing female executive representation positively affects female representation at the executive feeder level (Kurtulus & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012) and the tickle-down effect is strongest when female executive representation is between 15% and 45% (Gould, Kulik and Sardeshmukh, 2018). Social categorization and social identity theories suggest that women experience a positive psychological comfort zone while working with large or balanced gender representative groups and organizations due to gender friendly working environment which is clean from gender biases and sexual harassment (Kulik, Metz, and Gould 2016).When working with and for women, compared to male, female managers place higher priority in diversity issues, and the degree of priorities depends on the institutionalized diversity management initiatives while women leaders are more concerned with diversity management where socialization and diversity management issues are neglecting (Johansen and Zhu,2017). # b) Representative bureaucracy leads to an Inclusive work environment A difference between minority and majority employee groups is more visible in highly imbalanced organization, where majority groups try to build their own culture by creating a wall through keeping minorities outside of informal interactions. Therefore, there is a negative association between individual dissimilarity in gender and workplace inclusion (Pelled, Ledford, and Mohrman, 1999). In contrary Representative bureaucracy creates a more inclusive work environment. Andrews and Ashworth (2014) found that employees of the more representative organization feel a more inclusive working environment. The result demonstrates that increasing women representation in civil service develops a perception of higher inclusiveness and lower discrimination among female employees. Similarly, Naff (1995) found that women are likely to perceive discrimination against women when they are in a minority group in their workplace. In that situation, a female mentor is more likely cooperative to reduce a woman's perception about unfairly treatment. Therefore, increasing women representation in a powerful leadership position would increase the number of female mentors who are followed as a role model by the female employees and open the door for the followers by reducing the perception of subjective discrimination. Organizational inclusion refers to the degree of employee's perception by which he or she feels belongingness as an esteemed member of the workgroup where they will discover them as valued members for their unique characteristics. An inclusive organization not only places a high value on assimilation but also uniqueness. (Shore, et. al., 2011). Pelled, et. al. (1999) defined inclusion as the degree of treating and accepting employees as an insider by other organization members in the work system. Representative bureaucracies provide a more inclusive workplace where a high value is placed on both Since women can understand the women's issues, for example, privacy, sexual harassment, child care, work-life balance, gender representative bureaucracy may create women-friendly working environment. Though The organizational structure hinders women from having equal opportunities as like men, it is not impossible to adjust the structure for accommodating the needs of changing workforce and focus on representative bureaucracy (Guy, 2018). belongingness and uniqueness through developing the perception of fair treatment and lower discrimination and harassment (Andrews and Ashworth, 2014). Moreover, employees job satisfaction highly depends on fair treatment and effective diversity management practices while comparing to men women show higher satisfaction in response to fairness and valuing diversity (Choi & Rainey, 2014). Inclusive management plays a moderating role between demographic diversity and work behaviours. Kuk-Kyoung Moon (2016) showed inclusive management attenuates the positive relationship between gender diversity and turnover behaviour. When women feel included, they will show higher satisfaction and increased wellbeing and commitment level (Findler. L.; Wind, H. L. & Mor Barak, E.M. 2007). Therefore, workplace inclusion is a key strategy for effective diversity management as well as enhancing the positive aspects and outcomes of representative bureaucracy. # VII. Generating Substantive Benefits through Gender Representation # Inclusive working Environment Diversity Management # Gender # VI. Managing Diversity for Greater Efficiency Diversity in the employment of bureaucracy should not result with a zero-sum game where one side wins and other side loses. Rather it will move toward greater participation of all segments of the working population. Diversity reduces the risk of "Group Think" by bringing the creative idea with a wider range of perspective. Divers workers productivity can simulate by integrating changing workforce and moving away from the tradition of "one size fits all" (Condrey, 2005). Diversity issue relates with preventing discrimination by guaranteeing neutrality in Human Resource Management practices where the government can develop a capacity to render public service by integrating different life experiences, values and talents while using relevant competencies through an inclusive work system for achieving long term strategic goal (OECD Public Governance Committee, 2009). Fostering diversity in public service is only possible when organizational culture accepts equal opportunities and affirmative action. However, equal opportunity and fairness do not necessarily mean that everyone must be treated exactly a similar way but sometimes treating people differently can ensure equal opportunity in the employment of public service. From the above discussion and data, it can be assumed that gender representative bureaucracy can create value in the society by representing gender equality in the society and workplace that will fortify women psychology and confidence level. Moreover, increasing gender representation helps to develop an inclusive working environment where women can deliver substantive benefits to the female employees as well as female clients by providing empathetic support and services. Furthermore, managing diversity through valuing the differences in the workforce and ensuring equal contribution by removing the barriers through capacity building programs government can fully utilize the diverse talent and enhance performance through innovation and participation of the committed civil servants. The above figure shows that passive representation occurs with gender representative bureaucracy that creates the image of gender equality in the society and working environment where women feel inclusive. When their presence is equally visible in the working environment, the possibility of ignoring women will be abated and they may feel included and important in the organization that will enhance their confidence level to raise their voice for ensuring gender friendly working environment, raise the issue of diversity management. Similarly, when organizations value diversity in the workforce and manage them properly, the diverse group feel more included in the organization that leads to be committed, innovative, and efficient workforce for enhancing organization as well as government performance. Moreover, passive representation leads to active representation. For example, when women feel included in the organization and equally treated as valued employees through diversity management, they can produce substantive benefits directly to the women in the society as well as women in the organizational workforce by developing and implementing gender-friendly policies as well as delivering services with empathetic understanding. Moreover, they can change male colleagues' perception toward female clients and employees through sharing life experiences and counselling the importance of gender sensitivity in the workplace as well as in the society. Thus, the benefits make women empowered in the society and workplace that leads to increase women's economic participation that will enhance government performance through economic development and social security. Now it is time to look beyond the gender stereotyped and to ensure social equality we need to accommodate women career path and encourage representative bureaucracy both vertically as well as horizontally by promoting affirmative action and ensuring proper implementation. # VIII. Conclusion Government mission is to work for the people. Not only economic development but also human wellbeing should be the core concern. It is impossible to have economic progress without full contribution of the total working population. Increasing women representation in the civil service positively related with women wellbeing. From the fairness point of view, equal gender representation in the civil service ensure gender equality in society and reflect government responsibility. Women Representative bureaucrats can create a positive effect on the women directly by rendering gender friendly service and indirectly by changing the attitude of male counterparts. Representative bureaucracy helps to feel women included in the work environment and diversity management can integrate women in the workforce team and empowered in decision making, where they tend to develop genderfriendly policies that ultimately enhance government performance by creating a level playing field for men and women both in society as well as in public service management. Thus, gender representation helps to develop the economic and social conditions of a country. Therefore, gender representative bureaucracy can achieve both strategic goals by improving socioeconomic performance. Women number is important. 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