7. Women in Libraries: Status and Orientation to Work
| Pages | 37-45 |
| Published date | 01 April 1984 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb054874 |
| Date | 01 April 1984 |
| Author | Sheila Ritchie |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
7. Women in Libraries:
Status and Orientation to Work
by Sheila Ritchie
This article draws on research completed in Autumn 1984, and funded by the British
Library Research and Development Department.
I do not intend to reiterate arguments made elsewhere on the possible reasons for
women's lack of status in UK librarianship nor to describe some of the myths about
those reasons with facts and figures to disprove them; I would like to present an
outline of the attitudes held and to comment on some of the difficulties of research.
I have, therefore, concentrated here on the bare bones of the facts about women
and their status in libraries with the bulk of the commentary on the problems and
pitfalls of investigating the reasons why the distribution is so unbalanced.
General Picture, 1984
Public libraries are beginning to show evidence of awareness that women, and other
groups, are entitled to parity of treatment— a study of advertisements for jobs reveals
more and more employers who actually state their intention, all other things being
equal,
to favour certain groups. (This is not always spelt out in detail, but the GLC,
for example, does state that disabled people will be given preference.) The number
of women in senior posts in public libraries has increased over the past few years,
and this includes the very top levels. Perhaps more importantly, the number of women
in posts very close to top levels is increasing, which augurs well for the state of pro-
motions in a few years time.
Polytechnic libraries, and the larger colleges in the tertiary education sector, are less
promising;
the three women chief librarians of three years ago are now down to one,
although there are some senior appointments which will later result in top level pro-
motions (an assumption that could be ill founded).
In universities, very few women occupy top posts, and there is not much evidence
that the next few years will see a dramatic change.
Women enter the profession in larger numbers than men—that is to say, the propor-
tion of new entrants tends to hover around the 80:20 (womem:men) ratio and has
done so for many years. This tends to produce an age profile for women in the pro-
fession a little younger than that for men. The rate at which women leave the profes-
sion is also higher than that for men, at least in the early years after qualifying. This
is reversed in later years, with proportionately more men than women leaving. I am
not sure what to make of these particular distributions and trends: it could be
sug-
gested that the generally lower average age of women in the library profession goes
some way towards explaining why women tend to hold fewer qualifications than men,
but this is speculation.
To continue reading
Request your trial