Gender Disparities in Administrative Burden

• In Event: Administrative burdens: inequitable burdens, inequitable access.

Abstract

Administrative burden scholarship examines the onerous experience of citizen-state interactions. A primary area of focus, especially in social welfare policy, has been how burdens affect inequality.  But while there has been substantial attention to economic inequalities, such as how burdens differentially affect the poor, there has been relatively little attention to how these burdens affect gender inequality (Herd & Moynihan, 2025). 

But we have good reason to believe there may be gender differences in both the experiences and consequences of administrative burden. Women are disproportionately responsible for children and caregiving, which are the tasks that often require navigating complicated administrative barriers (Martin, 2024).  Moreover, women are disproportionately represented in social welfare programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the United States, that tend to have the highest burdens (Herd & Moynihan, 2025).   

How exactly gender differences in burden may manifest are not entirely clear.  On the one hand, women, as compared to men, given their caregiving responsibilities, are more likely to encounter barriers that can increase the experience of administrative burden. On the other hand, because women tend to do more of this kind of administrative labor, that experience may  lead them to feel less burdened by these processes as compared to men.  

To examine gender differences then, we leverage two surveys from Code for America’s GetCalFresh (California version of food stamps) program.  A total of nearly 48,000 SNAP applicants and participants answered surveys conducted in the spring of 2023. About one-third of these individuals were men, which does align with national data.  We analyzed the associations between gender and self-reported burden (learning, compliance, and psychological costs). 

We generally found that women experience fewer burdens than did men, particularly learning and compliance costs, in models that account for age, household size, whether the individual has stable housing, whether the individual received assistance with the application, and whether the household includes non-citizens and children.  The smallest gender differences were in psychological costs. 

Our findings infer relatively robust, albeit not large, gender differences in perceived burdens in te SNAP program.  Even though women may encounter more barriers in the SNAP program, given their greater likelihood to participate in the program as compared to men due their care responsibilities, men perceive the program as more burdensome than do women. This may reflect women’s greater expertise, gained via more experience,  in navigating onerous bureaucratic systems.

Herd, P., & Moynihan, D. (2025). Gendered administrative burden: regulating gendered bodies, labor, and identity. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 35(1), 45-57.

Martin, L. (2024). The intra-household distribution of administrative burdens. The Economic and Social Review, 55(3, Autumn), 387-456.

Authors

• Jaeyeong Nam, Kyung Hee University
  Presenting Author

• Pamela Herd, Georgetown University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Jeremy Barofsky, Georgetown University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Eric Giannella, Georgetown University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author