Implications For Understanding The Feminization Of Librarianship

By Author: Henter White
Total Articles: 73
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Historical explanations for the feminization of librarianship focus on the cultural and economic forces that conspired to allow women entree to certain professions. Women were cheaper to employ and were culturally associated with refined literary endeavors, from literary societies to public libraries, and with the caretaking of children. These cultural associations are often invoked as explanations for the feminization of the profession [3, 54-56]. According to these explanations, librarianship became a women's profession due to a "convergence of trends," including the "unprecedented growth of libraries" that took place at the same time as greater numbers of Shoes Online women were entering the workforce [57, p. 457]. Between the concurrent feminization of school teaching and the cultural association of women with children in the domestic sphere, the historical feminization of library work with children can seem over determined, perhaps even inevitable.

However, it is vital that we distinguish cultural tendencies, such as association with children and caretaking, from women's ...
... actions. As Anne Lundin writes: "While it is commonplace to relegate children's services within the female domain of cultural custodianship, this canonical view tends to deflect their contributions as mere societal reflection, rather than construction, as if it were a gendered expectation in the late nineteenth century to establish library services to children" [58, p. 188]. Even if cultural associations made it significantly easier for women to contribute professionally on the topic of children, women's actions still indicate that they made meticulous efforts, through their research, to argue that libraries should serve children. While the topic of the Reading of the Young reports fits within Discount Shoes the explanatory framework of cultural trends, the research model and form of the reports do not. While cultural associations of women with books and children were a significant factor, they provide only a partial explanation for the work of these early female leaders.

Furthermore, historical descriptions of the dynamics surrounding the feminization of librarianship as a whole suggest that women entered, but did not alter, the library profession. Historians describe women in librarianship as "domestic feminists" who "markedly expanded women's role in society without challenging the prevailing cult of domesticity" [54, p. 392]. The most noted explorations of this dynamic of feminizadon come from Dee Garrison, who argued that women were able to enter the profession because of the relatively low pay and status of librarianship and that their presence then kept both pay and status at low levels [28]. Garrison also argued that early female librarians were intellectually limited: "The first generations of library women, in developing the library field as a service profession, had not questioned sex-typed roles for women. There was thus no possibility that the first groups of educated women could conceive of themselves as disciplined intellects" [59, p. 164]. In this quote, the second sentence does not follow logically from the first. It is impossible to know how women's lack of overt questioning of gender roles may have affected their conceptions of themselves. However, the research model they developed provides evidence that women could and did engage in the disciplined intellectual work of surveying their colleagues and compiling empirical evidence about library practices. While the topic of children was associated with women's domestic roles, their research model was neither an outcome of these associations nor a continuation of men's professional practices. When women entered the discourse of librarianship, they altered the field substantially, introducing a research model that blended previously separated evidence based on individual expertise and gathering statistics.