Women at the Helm: Succession Politics at the Children's Bureau, 1912-1968.

SOCIAL services; LEADERSHIP; CULTURE; GENDER; SOCIAL security

The article focuses on leadership transitions at the U.S. Children's Bureau as a window for viewing the organization's life course in a gendered policy and cultural context. For social work students and practitioners of today, this article recaptures part of the profession's story, the narrative that provides a shared language, a sense of order, coherence, and continuity. The article takes a revisionist view of the Children's Bureau through gendered lenses, and it also seeks to clarify a misreading of gender as a category to explain the bureau's loss of status in 1969. Differences between the Children's Bureau and the Social Security Board suggest structural factors that help account for the demise of the Children's Bureau. The Social Security Board enjoyed much administrative autonomy because of its technical mystery. Few outsiders understood the actuarial bases for its tax rate and wage base increases, its obscure formulas for transforming earnings into benefits, or the accuracy of its long-term trust fund balance projections.