It all starts with a question: why is the stereotypical librarian a woman?
My name’s Peter, and this is Stacks and Facts.
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As of 2017 the American Library Association found that 81% of librarians identified as
women, 59% are 45 and older, and 86.7% are white.
And this isn’t new: librarians and library workers have been disproportionately middle-aged
white women for more than a century.
So it’s no wonder then that when we see librarians depicted in media, they are Tammy, Jocasta Nu,
or Madame Pince, and Google image search results for “librarian” are exactly what you’d expect.
So let’s talk about why.
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None of this is accidental.
Up to the mid-19th century, libraries were mostly university institutions, and might
be staffed by professors (men) on a part-time basis.
But this changed in 1887 when Melvil Dewey insisted that women be admitted to his new
library school at Columbia University.
He wanted to train them on his new invention, the Dewey Decimal System, because the cheap
labor that women provided would be a good way to spread it.
He trained cohorts of mostly women who were eager to find their way into the field on
cataloguing and classification: the fundamental skills of knowledge organization.
Women were keen on the chance to enter academia and the labor force, so they enrolled, graduated,
and started doing the invisible but essential work that makes libraries run: taking books
and other materials, cataloguing them, and organizing them for use by faculty and students.
Now, I want to mention here that for all of his contributions to the the profession, Melvil
Dewey also sexually harassed women throughout his entire career, and afterward.
It was such a problem that he eventually had to step down from the ALA, an organization
he co-founded.
This isn’t well known, but it should be, because it’s part of the gendered history
of librarianship, and deserves to be recognized.
After academia, *public* libraries in north america started taking off in the early 20th
century, and by 1920 librarianship overall was 90% women.
The along with traditional library services, public libraries promoted literacy and supported
their communities, which were seen as being in line with “feminine” values.
The attitudes of the time were that women were well-suited for this, what with their
inherent desire to serve and nurture and yes I’m also super grossed out hearing myself
say that.
Ugh.
This perception likely kept many men away, but not all of them, which gave women more
freedom to shape librarianship.
But only a very specific kind of woman could become a librarian:
First: She had to be able to afford the education.
This automatically outclassed anyone who didn’t have access to money: typically through their
family.
White families had inheritances; while black families had *nothing.*
Even though Dewey’s school opened 22 years after slavery ended in the United States,
racism and segregation were still very much in play.
Second: Her job had to explicitly *not* interfere with what she was otherwise expected to do:
make and care for babies, cook, clean, manage households, and so on.
Since single women past a certain age didn’t have these concerns, many entered the profession.
This is why librarians are stereotyped as spinsters, who are seen in a poor light because,
if I were to guess, a lot of men feel threatened by women who aren’t gonna put up with their
shi...nanigans.
Third: She could only take a position that men weren’t interested in.
Librarianship paid just enough for a single person to get by, and men were expected to
marry and support their families, so mostly avoided librarianship.
But this idea of men as breadwinners meant that it was *men*, not women, who ended up
in management positions -- jobs that paid well, even though women had much more experience
doing the work.
So that’s how it all started; but how has it played out over the past century?
Why hasn’t librarianship struck a balance since the 20’s, when the imbalance was at
its peak?
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Well, there are a few reasons.
First, requiring someone to get a Masters degree *still* excludes minorities and poor people
from the profession right from the get-go.
Perhaps even more so now, since education costs have skyrocketed and require access
to credit in the first place, which -- spoilers -- minorities traditionally don't have.
This is compounded by the fact that after getting your MLIS, many folks have to take
part-time work for a year (or more) because libraries rely on part-time positions to help
deal with shrinking budgets, since it means not having to pay benefits.
Full-time positions exist, but often require a year (or more) of work experience.
This is easier to get through if you’re married -- which historically, women 25 and
older have been.
But if not?
These circumstances drive people away who don’t have a financial safety net of some
sort, sometimes out of the profession altogether.
So even if library schools recruit and graduate more diverse cohorts, the field *still* gets
whitewashed and gender-washed *because young men and people of color are less likely to
have that same safety net.
As for library leadership, it’s changed dramatically -- at university libraries, women
went from filling only 4.6% of high level leadership positions in 1972 to 64% as of
2017, but men *still* make up a disproportionately large segment of directors, the very top position.
At public libraries, it’s less clear how things are now because I could only find data
from 1999, but that showed that men made up 21% of public librarians, but filled 35% of
the director positions.
Part of it is that leadership has been retiring later and later (likely the
results of the bad economy of the late 2000's), but it’s also partly because being seen as self-confident,
a risk-taker, and stoic are historically thought of as “manly” qualities, and therefore
marks of leadership ability.
On the other hand, being caring, nurturing, and good at communication are seen as “feminine”
traits, and are therefore better suited for “service” roles.
But this is a bunch of malarkey!
People of any gender can have masculine and feminine traits, and a lot of that comes down
to how someone is socialized; speaking from personal experience, a leader who’s “self-confident”
[subtext: arrogant] and “stoic” [subtext: emotionally detached] is a much worse leader
than someone who cares about and nurtures their people, but who doesn’t enjoy the
spotlight.
And frankly, these “service” [subtext: feminine] careers -- not just librarianship,
but education, social work, and nowadays, social media -- are highly-skilled, essential...
and consistently undervalued.
The gender wage gap is totally a thing in librarianship, too, if you were curious.
So all of this is why the stereotypical librarian is a white, middle aged woman: the system
was designed around them.
So why is this lack of diversity something that needs to change?
First: People of color, men, and nonbinary folks (who we don’t have a lot of data on)
live different lives and bring different experiences to the table.
These experiences let us relate to our patrons and understand their needs more completely
-- but if you allow it, ALSO serve to challenge ideas that might be accepted as
“common sense” in the profession, but that aren’t actually helpful or representative.
More on that in a bit.
Second: better representation in libraries helps push against the existing
stereotypes that plague librarians, and keep them from being taken seriously in the first
place.
To be crystal clear, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with librarians who
are white, middle-aged women -- but that’s *the* idea of what a librarian is in society’s
collective mind, to the exclusion of everyone else, regardless of whether or not they’re
suited for the job.
Changing the face of the profession has to happen, so that other people can see themselves
in the field, too.
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So, how do we move forward?
There’s no single answer that’ll solve everything, but here are a few thoughts I have,
as a man who decided to go into librarianship:
First, maybe libraries should stop relying on part-time and contract work.
These serve the needs of folks from households that already have a source of income, but
they hurt *everyone else* -- including the libraries themselves.
Maybe it feels charitable to offer more people *some* work, but part-time workers don’t
get benefits, paid time off, stability, or a sense of belonging.
By relying on part time work, libraries might save money, but at the cost of institutional
memory and a healthy workplace culture.
This is big.
Does it mean fewer people become librarians?
We don’t know -- but at least the folks who DO become librarians are given a work
environment where they can thrive.
And the other MLIS grads?
There are other MLIS jobs, and at least this way nobody feels like they have to grin and
bear it just to prove that they’re "worthy" of full-time work
-- and the basic human dignities that go along with it.
Second, No matter what, the field *can’t* sacrifice traditionally feminine ideals, and
the soft skills that go along with them, just to try and recruit more men.
These are what drew me to librarianship, and it’ll draw other men in, as well!
While doing the research for this video, I’ve read a lot of academic stuff that suggests,
maybe men go into feminized fields because they think it’ll be easier to achieve status,
and that they *must* be going after leadership roles because those are the only prestigious
positions available.
But I haven’t found a whole lot that’s considered that maybe… the reason men go
into caring fields… is...
Because we care.
As someone who fits that profile, it kinda stings to not see that considered.
But as of late, there’s data to show that I’m not a unicorn.
Well, not in that way.
;)
Results of a survey of young men came out earlier this year, and it turns out that openness
and selflessness were *broadly* seen as more important than autonomy or strength, and the
most highly ranked values of all were caring for others, and helping others.
Looking at a 2001 survey of male librarians, researchers found that about half of them
said that they don’t particularly *want* to be in leadership roles, but more than half
said that they felt others *expected* them fill them.
Nearly half of them reported that there were higher expectations being placed on them because
of their gender, and other work in 2004 showed this included being asked to do the “manly”
labor of heavy lifting and tech, even if they aren’t stronger or more technologically
adept.
Men are socialized by everyone -- which explicitly includes women -- not to talk about their
feelings, because under patriarchy, showing feelings is a liability.
This might be why these assumptions largely go unchallenged.
Fortunately this has been changing as of late (millennials kill everything), but even -- perhaps
especially -- in an overtly feminized work environment, these assumptions persist because
sexist attitudes were baked in at the field’s inception.
Consider: Are storytimes rarely done by men because they don’t want to do it, or is
it because they aren’t being offered the chance?
Are men hidden from public view in tech and management roles because that’s what they
*want* to do, or because they’re *expected* to?
By 2004 at least, men were saying that this *was* the case,
and when this happens, nobody sees men at the library, so boys don’t see a future
for themselves there.
If you find yourself in a leadership position (and if you’re going into librarianship,
you will), I hope this gets you thinking about your own assumptions, and how the way you
act on them supports or resists patriarchal systems that hurt us *all,*
regardless of gender.
So that’s all I got, but I want to hear from you: what does librarianship look like
to *you,* and how would you *like* it to look?
What kinds of solutions do you see for problems of representation in the field -- not just of
gender, but for race, sexuality, ability?
You name it, down below in the comments -- or tweet at me: @StacksEtFacts.
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As always, thanks for watching and until next time…
Don’t forget to ask questions. Alright, bye. ^_^
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