Samanta publishes feminist appraisal of federal bureaucracy
Aritree Samanta, assistant professor of Environmental Studies in the School of Public Affairs & Civic Engagement, recently published a co-authored article in the journal Perspectives on Public Management and Governance on “Gender Ramifications of a Weberian Bureaucracy: A Feminist Appraisal of the United States Department of Agriculture.”
In this article, Samanta and Shilpa Viswanath, assistant professor of public management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, take a critical feminist perspective to evaluate federal bureaucracies, in particular the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Viswanath and Samanta challenge the notion of a gender-neutral bureaucracy and argue that federal institutions, especially the USDA, are designed to serve “men” that lead to serious ramifications for policy design and provision of public services. This is the first critical feminist appraisal of the USDA, one of the largest federal bureaucracies. Viswanath and Samanta also include a description of decades of systemic discrimination and civil rights violations undertaken by the various USDA agencies based on gender, race, ethnicity and immigration.
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