Policy as Dialogue: feminist administrators working for educational change

The focus of this paper is upon the way in which feminist educators as administrative 'leaders' conceptualised policy within what could be described as the 'masculinist' bureaucratic culture of an Australian state bureaucracy. The paper arises out of a larger research project focusing upon the ways in which change was viewed by women who have moved from voluntary and reform oriented work in teacher, curriculum and parent organisations into senior administrative positions in the late 1980s. This paper considers how they strategically addressed issues about the production of policy within a culture which was informed by particularly technicist views of bureaucratic rationality whilst negotiating the personal contradictions and tensions of being administrators and feminist educators working for more equitable forms of education.