I very much appreciate the opportunity to add my voice to the many NAPA Fellows celebrating Women's History Month. In responding to the questions below, however, I am fully aware that I cannot address the questions with the experiences and perspectives that women will bring to the same subjects.

Why do you think Women’s History Month is important?

In class discussions, I have asked whether students were aware of the work of a number of women who have been or are now leaders in public administration and was surprised to see how few of them showed any recognition when I mentioned particular icons of the profession, regardless of the student’s gender identity. That alone is reason enough to find this month important!

This matter first came up when we were discussing perspectives on management and leadership in a class session. I mentioned Mary Parker Follett, an early leader in trying to understand these two concepts. None of the students appeared to be aware that Parker Follett was a leading scholar in the field dominated by men in that era.

Following up on that and some other material, I asked whether anyone knew of the work of Jane Addams, founder of Hull House in Chicago, who was so important in the settlement movement and her pioneering work in social service delivery at the local level, not to mention her international efforts. None of the students were aware of her or that she was only the second woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and the first American woman to do so.

Moving forward in time some decades, it was clear that none of the students knew that Rachel Carson was a federal civil servant or about the work she did or the challenges she faced long before she wrote her classic Silent Spring, the book that so propelled the modern environmental movement forward.

Even a woman of such impressive accomplishments and international visibility as Gro Harlem Brundtland was not someone the students recognized. Not only was she the first woman to be Prime Minister of Norway (and the youngest person to hold that position), serving three terms in that office, she is also a physician who began her career as a public health officer in local government in the City of Oslo and for the Oslo schools. She was later asked to head the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development (popularly known as the Brundtland Commission), in no small part because of her international reputation for strong and independent leadership. The now iconic Our Common Future report issued by her commission, provided the impetus for sustainable development as we know it today. She later served as Director General of the World Health Organization. And when Nelson Mandela brought together a group of esteemed world leaders to form “The Elders,” an independent body, but one that advises and advocates for UN reform, Gro Harlem Brundtland was one of that initial extremely distinguished group. She was also appointed by the UN Secretary General as Special Envoy on Climate Change, serving in that role for three years.

It was also important in these conversations with students to discuss the fact that there have been so many women leading the profession on the practitioner side of things in public administration. I asked if any of the students knew of Rosslyn S. (Roz) Kleeman or Alice Rivlin. None of the students, regardless of gender identity, recognized those important leaders in the field and Fellows of the Academy. That was the case despite the fact that Roz served as Distinguished Executive-in-Residence in the Department of Public Administration, George Washington University and was “Former Staff, Office of Presidential Personnel, The White House; Director, Federal Workforce Future Issues and Senior Associate Director, General Government Division, U.S. General Accounting Office; Project Director, U.S. Office of Management and Budget; President’s Advisory Council on Management Improvement; Acting Director and Deputy Director, Women’s Action Program, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.” She was so central to early development of the Senior Executive Service. And her career of leadership and service continued well after her retirement.

The students did not recognize Alice Rivlin. As those of us in the Academy know well, of course, she was the first Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and Director of OMB. She was needed to head the newly created Congressional Budget Office at the time because she would bring to it the stature, strength, and independence that new organization needed to be able to speak truth to power on both sides of the aisle and in both houses as well as to those on the other end of the avenue.

On the academic side, of course, there were and are many women who have played important leadership and scholarly roles. Certainly, Mary Guy is one of those who has received well-deserved recognition for her professional career of scholarship and service. Of course, over time, we have seen newer scholars come along. We are fortunate that so many are Fellows of the Academy—and that list is a long one.

In short, the story needs to be told about women’s leadership in all these areas, and our students, as well as developing professionals in the field, need to hear it. One would hope this month will be a way to spark that awareness and appreciation.

Tell us about a woman who inspires you.

First of all is my wife and partner Dr. Claudia María Vargas. We often joke that we are one of those relatively unusual couples who can team-teach and write books together and still stay married.

After her I think often of Roz Kleeman. I once dedicated a book to Roz. “To Rosslyn S. Kleeman, who has taught so many of us by her example what public service professionalism truly is.” For anyone who knew her, Roz was an inspiration. Not only was she a leader in so many ways within the field, but she continued her contributions after she had supposedly retired. Indeed, it was in part because of that good work that the Academy renamed its prestigious “Keeper of the Flame” Award in her honor. The “Rosslyn S. Kleeman Keeper of the Flame Award,” of course, is given to “an individual who has continued to provide public service after their official retirement from the profession.”

What steps do you think still need to be taken to achieve gender equality?

This is a very large question, much too broad to answer briefly. I would suggest, however, that one concern that I have had for years is that we have too many public service professionals, including the younger generations moving into their careers, who lack basic knowledge of civil rights. In teaching a civil rights for public service course over the years and having written a book by that title, I continue to be surprised at how little many people know about the foundations of civil rights, including those concerning sex discrimination (not only as to discrimination against women specifically, but also with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity). This civil rights perspective is also important because many women also experience challenges as members of ethnocultural groups that have faced a long history of exclusion. If we could all at least start from the foundations of civil rights principles, it could inform in so many ways not only our practice with the communities we serve, but also our relationships with others in the organizations within which we work. It is one piece of the many things we need to do, but an important one. Even so, to the best of my knowledge, there are relatively few courses that deal directly with that subject in our professional programs and a quite limited literature directly addressing the subject of civil rights in public administration.

What is a women’s issue that is important to you, and why?

Many women in the field as practitioners and in academic roles have identified a wide range of issues that have particular significance for women. Certainly, Mary Guy has been for many years a leader in this work as has Norma Riccucci. Central to many of these issues, of course, has been the continuing economic inequalities experienced by woman for so long and in so many ways.

If I were to express one wish for discussions of these challenges over time, it would be that, as we recognize and address what are often termed women’s issues, we could agree that although their most obvious direct impacts may fall upon women, in truth they are important issues for all of us to confront. We are all in this life together, professionally and otherwise. Justice Brennan authored an important opinion about Social Security survivor’s benefits in a case where a woman who was a public servant died and her widower was denied benefits. Brennan wrote that the issue was not primarily about the man’s eligibility for the benefits. Rather Brennan focused on the fact that this woman, who worked in a school district for some 25 years and paid into Social Security all that time, had every bit as much of a right to expect that her family would be cared for in the event of her passing as a man would in similar circumstances. In her opinion in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, Justice O’Connor wrote that the fact that a man was denied admission to the nursing program was, of course, a discrimination against him, but it was also a reinforcement of employment stereotypes long used against women. It reinforced, she said, the idea that nursing was a woman’s profession, which suggested that other fields were not for women. We will have reached a new level of maturity in our society when we can recognize that women’s issues are issues that all of us need to address for the good of the entire community.

Phillip J. Cooper is the Douglas & Candace Morgan Professor of Local Government in the Department of Public Administration in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government Portland State University. A Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, he was the first recipient of the Charles Levine Award given by the American Society for Public Administration and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. His recent books include Local Government Administration: Governance in Communities, Policy Tools in Policy Design, Civil Rights in Public Service, and By Order of the President, 2^nd Ed.