Resumen de Social class, sexual orientation, and toward proactive social equity scholarship

Kenneth Oldfield, George Candler, Richard Greggory Johnson

• An analysis of data from the premier public administration journals in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States shows academic public administration has taken both a narrow and a conservative approach to four social equity issues, including gender, race, sexual orientation, and social class. The findings show these periodicals (a) seldom and sometimes never publish articles on the four themes; (b) confine nearly all their social equity writings to race and gender; sexual orientation and social class receive little or no attention; and (c) only publish such papers long after the matter has become fashionable in most other social circles. The article concludes by suggesting ways American public administration can develop a more intellectually diverse, proactive professoriat, thereby allowing for publishing more¿and more timely¿articles about emerging social equity topics.