The following is taken from "Barriers to women's career progression in LIS"
Elizabeth McDermott
Library Management; 19: 7 1998; pp. 416-420:
"The sexual segregation of the library and information services (LIS)
workforce is well established:
most workers in the LIS profession are women and yet the higher salary and
status levels are
occupied by men. This is typical of female-dominated professions and
women+s position in the
hierarchy reflects, and is reflected, in their position in the workforce in
the UK and Western society....
Women comprise about 74 per cent of the membership of the Library
Association,
which would suggest that about 74 per cent of the top salary earners should
be women; instead, in
1991 they accounted for only 40 per cent of the top salary earners.
Furthermore, of those earning
?10,000 and below, 89.55 per cent were female, more than in 1988
(Nankivell, C. (1992), Equal Opportunity in the Library Profession, Library
Association)."
So it seems pretty clear that there is a problem.
It doesn't follow that all of this is down to sexist men refusing to
promote women, although no doubt this is an issue. Perhaps the real issue
is that many women are still expected to fulfill domestic and caring roles
that effectively exclude them from consideration for senior management
posts - which posts carry very male baggage in terms of the way in which
the postholders are expected to work. Certainly Mcdermott's research
suggests this is the case.
Dan
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