ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the women's movement in American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) and provides a selected profile of women in public administration. It also focuses on the dilemma of why so few women have been able to move into top jobs. Three theses are advanced for analyzing the blockages to female entry into high level decisional posts: The political, biological, and sociological. The chapter presents a timely overview on the status of women in the United States and their search for justice and equity. It describes and critiques the federally recommended process for determining affirmative action goals and suggests a more workable set of criteria for reaching measurable goals. The chapter concentrates on a specific occupational area in which women predominate but have little visibility and exert little influence as administrators in the human services profession. It also presents a case study of women as the makers of policy and designers of programs dealing with women's rights.
