Women in Partnerships? A Gender Analysis of Collaborative Governance in the UK

The nature of work and traditional notions of the public sector environment have been changing with increasing collaborative governance and delivery of public services among public, private and voluntary sector organizations.... [ view full abstract ]

The nature of work and traditional notions of the public sector environment have been changing with increasing collaborative governance and delivery of public services among public, private and voluntary sector organizations. In the UK, central and devolved governments have adopted a collaborative governance approach to service delivery through various network and partnership arrangements. This paper explores these collaborative governance arrangements from a gender perspective. While previous research in this area have explored the inter-organizational aspects of collaborative governance such as dimensions of power, trust, accountability, decision making, performance, exchange of information and participation; there is very little research on the role of women within these networks. The paper therefore provides a feminist perspective of collaborative governance with the disaggregation of survey data by gender to better understand the dynamics of collaborative partnerships.