Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy,
Amsterdam 1994, dissertation University of Amsterdam INTRODUCTION
1
Introduction: the search for explanation of the phenomenon of the
underrepresentation of women in positions of command in modern
bureaucracies
1.
The feminist claim to equality with men versus the exclusion of women from the
brotherhood of equal men; the struggle with universalist concepts and the conceptual
separation of public and private life - 1
2. Two options to connect sex-defined to sex-neutral concepts - 3
3.
Bureaucracy and masculine domination in Max Weber's Economy and Society - 5
1. The feminist claim to equality with men versus the exclusion of women from the
brotherhood of equal men; the struggle with universalist concepts and the conceptual
separation of public and private life.
In democratic societies which proclaim the formal equality of all subjects, entire areas of
social and economic activity are monopolized by men. Positions of command in particular
are considered a masculine prerogative. Although affirmative action programs designed to
support women in their claim to access to these positions have at times caused some
change, female leaders are no more than exceptions which prove the rule.¹
The long and arduous fight for formal equality between women and men started with the
declarations of human rights of the French and American revolutions. Feminists formulated
their claims within the framework of Enlightenment universalism: if all men are equal,
equality includes women. As the women of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 formulated
it:
'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
'²
The burden of proof that women really are human, however, was still placed on the
feminists. Universal human rights on which formal democracy was based did not
automatically apply to them; they had to fight the whole body of rules which implemented
their exclusion. Today most human rights have been acquired, many discriminatory rules
have been abolished³ and universalist rules are declared to include women. Yet application
of these rules still confers the largest part of wealth, power and prestige to men, although
'brotherhood' has been deleted from the public relations slogans of Western society. Women
still have to prove that they possess exceptional qualities to gain leadership functions.
Feminists therefore still feel compelled to keep explaining that women have the same
1
Facts and figures on the positions of women can be found in feminist literature and in governmental and other
affirmative action programs. See for recent data on the Netherlands Bruyn-Hundt (1988); M.I. Demenint en C.E.
Disselen (1992).
2
Seneca Falls Declaration, in Schneir ed. (1972), p. 77 ff.
3
In the Netherlands, as in the USA, the word 'male' was added to the Constitution article regarding voting rights
at the end of the 19th century. From 1904 on several laws explicitly forbade certain official functions inside the
government to women; these articles were repealed in the thirties and forties. See Posthumus-van der Goot e.a.
(1977), p. 99 and 212.
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