Negotiating with the Patriarchy: The Exercise of Public Authority By Women Public Servants in Pakistan

How do women government servants exert public authority in patriarchal states? This paper draws on an oral history archive of women’s experiences in public service in Pakistan to identify how women negotiate around social mores, state structures, and private and public relationships to be able to exert their authority as employees of the state. I use a feminist institutional lens to analyse life history interviews, as well as news reports and images, to highlight both ‘rules about gender’ and ‘rules with gendered effects’ (Lowndes 2020). In doing so, I show how the interactions of rules, structural factors, and roles played by gendered actors (formal and informal, historical and contemporary) shape women public servants’ careers and lives.

While informal rules create constraints that most women are fully socialised into, formal rules with gendered effects create constraints that frustrate women public servants and drive action. However, this action remains individualised due to the structure of the bureaucracy and the informal rules guiding women's behaviour in a patriarchal state. My argument has implications for understanding how women in sarkari nokri (government employment) create space for themselves within patriarchal states and the extent to which their progress remains contingent on space being created for them to negotiate within. Furthermore, my work brings historical methods to bear on the study of institutions and institutional change to show how the rules of the game shape women public servants’ careers and lives.