8. The Power of Women in Libraries
| Date | 01 April 1984 |
| Published date | 01 April 1984 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb054875 |
| Pages | 46-59 |
| Author | Avril V. Rolph |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
8. The Power of Women
in Libraries
by Avril V. Rolph
"At 7p.m. on Thursday 18th September there will be an open meeting for any women
interested in helping to organise a 'Feminism and Library Work' conference..."[1] began
the advertisement which started it all off, in the Autumn of 1980.
That this advertisement was drafted owed something to a non-librarian in that I had
been grumbling for a long time about the problems for women working in libraries;
the isolation I felt as a feminist, the overwhelming preponderance of men in
posi-
tions of authority and the effect this has on women both as workers and as readers,
but I had insufficient confidence to do anything concrete about it all. Most of my
grumbling had been directed at the friend with whom I live, a feminist and a science
lecturer at Polytechnic of Central London, who had contact with Sherry Jespersen
who was then working in the Engineering and Science Library at PCL. When she
realised that Sherry was also a feminist librarian who obviously had ideas and pro-
blems similar to mine, she persuaded Sherry that it was a good idea to organise a
meeting for other like-minded women librarians on the basis that there was at least
one other woman who would be interested. I agreed to do the initial publicity for
this meeting and accordingly sent off notices to all the feminist and library publica-
tions I could think of.
Our confidence that other women were interested was justified when about 20 women
turned up and it became immediately obvious that there was so much to discuss
that a conference, or several conferences, were called for. We were all concerned
about the relatively low position women generally hold in library hierarchies, the
dif-
ficulties we face if we do not agree with the (male) value system on which the hierar-
chy is likely to be based, the lack of provision of practical measures which might
help women in their careers (child-care provision, job-sharing schemes, part-time
posts for qualified librarians, refresher courses for women returning to work after
a break to bring up a family). We also shared a concern with the image of women
which is portrayed in much of the material libraries provide, and agreed on the need
to counteract the often stereotyped and sexist images with much more positive
material,
which many librarians find far from easy given traditional prejudice against
what are seen as "extreme" feminist books.
These kinds of issues were, in fact, becoming increasingly important to many women;
a conference of Women in Book Trades which had focused on some of the same
issues had been held in 1979, and Women in Publishing had been formed in January
1980.
The First Conference
After the initial meeting a nucleus of about ten women met regularly to set about
organising a conference. None of us had any experience of organising conferences
and there were a good many occasions when we felt utter panic —how would we
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