Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 27th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG7: Public Administration Education Author(s) Valeriya Utkina Higher School of Economics Moscow Russian Federation Alina Efimova, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, RussiaMikhail Raschupkin, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia Title Why do Ghanaian and Russian Women Study Public Administration? File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Valeriya Utkina Abstract The global processes of incorporating women into the labor market, including the civil service, are paying off. Today, there is a trend towards the feminization of the civil service: in Russia, more than 70% of civil servants are women, and in Ghana - more than 50%. Thus despite the high numbers of females in the civil service, gender disparities and discriminations remain a critical phenomenon in the civil service in Ghana. There is a “gender pyramid” in Russia and Ghana, when only a small proportion of women have an access to decisions-making level. In both countries, one of the main reasons for women to join civil service is flexible work schedule, which enabled them to combine work and family and job security. Despite all the differences in socio-economic development situation in Russia and Ghana with the motivation of women to work for the government is quite similar: they joined because of the benefits they were told the civil service gives to it employees, such as job security, study leave, retirement benefits, allowances, good salary and a few indicated they joined because there was no job in the private sector. However the question arises how this women made a decision to get education applicable to continue their professional life in public sector. This study is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 30 women from all over Ghana and 30 women from Russia who work in the various civil services offices in various regions of their countries. While most of the Ghanaian young women in the service indicated that due to their background in terms of education it automatically made them a civil service worker, the Russians women made their complicated choice to work for the government after getting major in Public Administration. We came to the conclusion that, with many differences, the mechanisms for choosing the future profession of a civil servant in Russia and Ghana are quite similar: this is the ‘inheritance mechanism’ (when someone from relatives already works for the state), or the desire for a girl to get ‘female’ profession. According to the results of our research it’s hardly possible to relegate public service as a "comfortable women's job", but at the same time women do choose higher education in this field and more over desire for further training.
