Women and Health Sciences Librarianship: An Overview* BY RACHAEL K. GOLDSTEIN, Assistant Professor ofMedical Education and Director
Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library Mount Sinai School of Medicine of The City University of New York New York, New York ABSTRACT
In biomedical libraries, as in other areas of librarianship, women continue to be underrepresented in administrative positions. This paper reviews some of the factors contributing to the present situation and discusses implications and suggested courses of action for health sciences librarians.
overall number of women who made up the librarian work force. In the 140 libraries, a total of 893 women were employed as librarians. Six percent of these women were there as head librarians. Two hundred sixty-one male librarians worked in these same libraries, but over 30% of them were there in a head librarian capacity. Within the last generation there has been a steady trend of men replacing women in the administration of health sciences libraries. While only 40% of these libraries were headed by women in 1972, in 1950, 83% were. At that time, women made up about 89% of the library profession, and they headed up medical libraries in reasonable proportion to their total numbers within the field. The predominance of women as librarians has remained relatively stable since 1950 and still accounts for over 80%, but the percent of women as head librarians in medical libraries has obviously declined radically. These libraries have not been resurveyed since 1972. However, an informal picture of what has happened to the heads of medical school libraries during the last few years emerges from a review of listings in the most recent Medical Library Association and Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) directories and of MLA News announcements. Almost 30% of the libraries were either founded since 1972 or have different head librarians. Nevertheless, the ratio of men to women as heads of medical school libraries remains virtually unchanged. In the last four years men have continued to assume over 60% of the new or vacated positions.
THE role of women in biomedical libraries is not of concern to women only. It is a professional problem affecting all who care about the future of our libraries. Approximately 85% of the individual members of the Medical Library Association are women [1]. In 1972 Goldstein and Hill [2] surveyed the largest health sciences libraries in the United States to ascertain the extent to which women participated in their administration. While the inquiry was limited to the largest, it did include all medical school libraries. In the 140 libraries that responded, women librarians outnumbered men three to one. However, in these very same libraries almost 60% of the head librarians were men. In other words, although the total librarian population was over 75% female, women did not hold even half of the top positions. In the medical school libraries, over 78% of the librarians were women, but fewer than 34% of the head librarians were. This disproportion of women in administration becomes even more conspicuous in the largest libraries, where there were three women employed for every man. Among the head librarians of this group the ratio was exactly reversed; head librarians were three to one male. In the smallest libraries, women made up an even larger proportion of the staff, over 83%, and they WOMEN IN LIBRARIANSHIP held 75% of the top jobs. This was the group where The role of women in health sciences libraries is women held more head librarian positions than men did, but even so, not in proportion to the not unique. It is comparable to what prevails in the rest of the profession. Librarianship was once *Based on a paper presented June 16, 1976, at the a masculine preserve. One does not picture Seventy-fifth Annual Meeting of the Medical Library women in charge of the Alexandrian Scrolls or of Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Renaissance collections, and in nineteenth Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
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century America, running a library was considered a man's job. At the first convention of the American Library Association in 1876 almost 90% of the attendees were men. Melvil Dewey opened the library school at Columbia in 1887 with women making up the majority of the students. Employing women in "Library Economy," as the field was then called, was perceived as an effective way to get maximum service for a limited financial outlay. Dewey rationalized that lower salaries for women were appropriate because of their poor health, lack of business training, lack of permanence, and their receiving other considerations from men because of their sex. Only a few years earlier, Justin Winsor had extolled the advantages of women in libraries because "they soften our atmosphere, they lighten our labour, they are equal to our work," and the "pick of the educated young women" were available at very low pay [3]. By 1920, 90% of the librarians in this country were women, and the familiar stereotype of the librarian took shape: a middle-aged, unfashionablydressed, bespectacled lady with hair pulled back into a bun, who spent much of her time silencing exuberant expressions within her domain. The Wilson Bulletin for Librarians speculated on whether "the preponderance of women in the American library profession [should] be considered an evil?" [4]. But a 1938 editorial in Library Journal condemned the undue emphasis that had been placed on recruiting young men for administrative positions, claiming that "the library profession is going backward when it practically closes the doors of its best positions to women." The editors contended that if the trend continued "it would become increasingly difficult to attract (and retain) capable young women ... and it will by no means follow that young men of equal ability will come in to take their places" [5]. In the ensuing discussion the hope was expressed that this open debate would prod the profession into facing up to the apparent discrimination against women's advancement and would result in some action, as "a generation of capable women are being passed over in favor of young men who have yet to serve their normal period of apprenticeship" [6]. There were those who felt it was only right for men to receive a disproportionate share of the better library jobs, as they possessed more ability. One individual reasoned that since the library profession was so clearly identified as a woman's field and many men would fear that their 322
masculinity would be questioned if they entered the profession, "only men with a genuine love for library work" are willing to brave this suspicion. "The fact that this prejudice does not exist among women .. means that large numbers of girls on the lookout for what they consider an easy job, study library science." He further rationalized that the low pay for librarians effectively weeded out the poorly equipped men, but left poorly equipped women. Male librarians not good enough to get the better paying positions could easily switch to other lines of work where they would earn more, while women would get equally low pay elsewhere, and would therefore be content to hold poor jobs in libraries [7]. The debate in the pages of Library Journal did not have the salubrious results that had been desired, for in 1971 they devoted a whole issue to the same subject and editorialized about it again, this time abandoning the genteel tones of 1938. Speaking out against laws and practices that locked women into low level jobs, the editorial denounced the "dubious protection" that resulted in fully qualified female librarians getting stuck with an "overload of clerical chores in a tender effort by their male administrators to shield them from tilting heavy glasses with trustees at play ... The younger women are now determined to belly up to the bar with the best or die drunk trying"
[8].
A pattern of women's job levels, status, and salary runs through the entire field. In every category women are underrepresented in the top policy-making jobs as compared to their proportion of the work force in that category. Whether one looks at public, academic, or special libraries, as the size of the library increases there are fewer women administering it [9]. Salary studies of a variety of library specialty groups all show that women earn lower salaries with the same level of education as men, and both with and without experience. Even women with doctoral degrees earn significantly less than men at every age level, and salary differentials between men and women broaden with experience. Anita Schiller's landmark study of academic librarians documented that among those with less than five years of professional experience, the median salary for women was 92% of what the men were earning with that level of experience. But among those with twenty or more years of experience, women earned only 70% as much as male librarians with the same level of experience [10]. In Minnesota, a survey of public library Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
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members of the Minnesota Library Association showed that while there were over six women in this group for every man, the men made aii average salary of $17,911 while the women's average was $11,784. The survey found that the higher salaries did not necessarily correlate with longterm professional experience [11]. It is difficult to assess whether changes are taking place in response to the generally increased awareness of salary inequities. The Special Libraries Association salary surveys of 1970 and 1973 show that average salaries for special librarians were higher in 1973. However, the mean salaries for women remained at about 75% of those for men [12]. The outlook for the future is that librarianship will continue to be overwhelmingly female for quite some time to come. According to data released by the American Library Association, women still receive over 80% of the degrees awarded in library education programs in the United States [13]. WOMEN IN OTHER PROFESSIONS Biomedical librarians are part of the health service industry, and it is instructive to look at the role of women in some other health care related professions. Numerically, women dominate the health occupations. They represent 71% of all persons employed; yet they account for less than 9% of the group with the highest status and income, namely, physicians, dentists, veterinarians, optometrists, and related practitioners. Women
still constitute approximately 97% of the nursing profession [14]. Men hold a small number of available nursing administration positions, but there has been a discernible rate of increase in the percent of men occupying these jobs which exceeds the rate of increase of men in the total nursing population. In other words, the greatest rate of increase of male representation within nursing is in the top administrative sector [15]. Social work, like librarianship and nursing, has been generally referred to by sociologists as a "female" profession, one in which the percentage of women in the field exceeds the percentage of women employed in the labor force as a whole.
work, which at one time frequently had women deans, were found by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education to be almost exclusively headed by men in late 1971 [18]. Within each of the "female" professions, when there is an increasing demand for administrators, it intensifies the tendency of men to dominate the field. While men do not dominate numerically they tend to do so through their entry into the administrative sectors [15]. Nurses played a leading role in administering hospitals in the early part of the modern period. They added the responsibilities of supply, feeding, and housekeeping to their nursing duties. Nowadays, over 70% of Catholicsponsored hospitals have female administrators, but women are much less evident in top management positions of non-Catholic voluntary community hospitals. In 1973, the Commission on Education for Health Administration found that women were grossly underrepresented among the students and faculty of health administration. Among recent graduates of health administration programs, men are significantly more likely to secure hospital positions. A larger proportion of the male graduates moved into line administrative jobs, while the female graduates tended to end up in research, program analysis, and planning, rather than in management per se [19]. Only a small percentage of practicing physicians in the United States are women; in 1970, approximately 9% were. However, during the last few years their enrollment in U.S. medical schools has increased rapidly, by 140% since the 1971/72 school year, and in 1975/76, 24% of all first-year students were women [20]. In the last twenty-five years, the percentage of women appointed to medical school faculties has grown from 11% to over 18% [21].
SEX STEREOTYPES Broad assumptions about men's and women's general characteristics have played a large part in getting us all into the present situation. Stereotypes are so tenacious and widespread that we assume that they are based on biology, that they are inevitable, and that they are grounded in These are Amitai Etzioni's so-called "semi- documentation. Some widely held beliefs are: professions" [16]. Among members of the Na- women are overemotional and have poor judgtional Association of Social Workers, men are ment; women executives are aggressive and untwice as likely as women to hold general adminis- feminine; women are absent more than men and trative jobs. Although three out of four need less money and less status; neither men nor professional staff members are women, between women want to be supervised by women; women 1957 and 1967 the proportion of women executives are domineering but also weak [22]. Developmental psychologists have been doing decreased from 60% to 34% [17]. Schools of social
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extensive research to determine which beliefs regarding sex differences are supported by evidence. In studying infants and children they have found that girls are not more suggestible than boys and that they do not have lower self-esteem; that neither boys nor girls are better either at rote learning and simple repetitive tasks or at tasks that require higher levels of cognitive processing; and that girls do not lack achievement motivation. On the other hand, they have demonstrated that girls possess greater verbal ability than boys do, but that boys have more mathematical and visualspatial ability. Males are also more physically aggressive. Since intellectual aptitudes are comparable for both sexes, is physical aggressiveness the primary criterion for professional leadership? It is usually not the method employed among mature human beings. Even in business, negotiation and skills in achieving managerial consensus have replaced the iron-fisted tycoon of yesteryear [23]. Preconceived notions produce some rather strange results. Women who are said to "have intuition" and a gift for handling interpersonal relations are encouraged to become social workers; whereas men who work well with people are called "good diplomats" and are given important political and executive posts. A study of employment practices showed that women were denied advancement because employers felt that they were "too emotional," though no employer objected to the man who might "blow his stack." The sex-typing of occupations is frequently neither consistent nor logical, and there is historical evidence of occupations that have shifted in definition from male to female and vice versa. When the United States was still a pioneer country, primary school teaching was considered a male occupation. Women began to predominate, and public attitudes changed to bless the field as suitably feminine when the growing movement for mass education, combined with a shortage of men during the Civil War, created a demand for teachers that required the recruitment of women [24]. Once upon a time midwifery was a traditionally female job, and male assistance at childbirth was regarded as indecent. It is in relatively recent times that the delivery of a newborn has become essentially the domain of predominantly male medical practitioners [25]. The tenuous rationalizations about the appropriateness of certain occupations for men and women are post-factum explanations, and several of them show not only historical but also cultural 324
variability. There are significant differences among countries. In the United States medicine is considered a male profession, while in Russia women are actually channeled into this pursuit as it is considered appropriate and befitting their female talents. Our society contends that women cannot be good engineers or lawyers because they call for qualities which are not feminine. In Russia, about one-third of the lawyers and engineers are women, a situation suggesting that the differences called for are cultural rather than biological [24]. It is reputed that women's high rate of absenteeism and turnover are among the reasons they do not move into top administrative positions in any profession. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has concluded that absenteeism and turnover rates are more closely associated with the kind of job and its salary than with the sex of the jobholder, and studies show that turnover rates of men and women in libraries do not differ significantly [3]. According to a survey of the American Council on Education, in 1972/73 nearly onefourth of all teaching faculty had interrupted their professional careers for more than one year, and a greater percentage of men than of women had done so [18]. Some employers consider women poor risks because of their supposed tendencies to enter and leave the job market in relation to their childbearing. But what about the millions of women who work to exist? The single women? The heads of families? It has been proven that professional success, high status, and extensive training also increase vocational commitment [26]. Data from the 1972 survey of large medical libraries reveal that the women head librarians had occupied these positions in their institutions for an average of 10.6 years, while the mean length of stay of the men was 6.2 years, a difference of almost four and one-half years. Does this indicate that when a woman accepts the position of chief librarian she tends to stay with the job and make a commitment to the institution? Are our search committees looking for people who will make only a few years' commitment? Nevertheless, old myths die hard. There is no concrete evidence to show that menstrual, menopausal, or gynecological difficulties are the cause of employment problems. Most problems faced by working women are psychological in origin, the result of job frustrations and inequities [27]. In the traditional upbringing, part of achieving our cultural feminine ideal is learning how to Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
WOMEN AND HEALTH SCIENCES LIBRARIANSHIP repress direct hostility. As a result of deeply ingrained training, many a woman can remain pleasant and ingratiating with bosses and with those who have been promoted over her, even if she has been "passed over" repeatedly [28]. In October 1972 Ellen Gay Detlefson evoked groans of recognition when she spoke to the MLA New York Regional Group about the prevalence of "Mathildas" in our profession. They are the righthand women of male library administrators, the long-suffering first assistants, grateful at getting so far and not worrying why they have gotten no further. A woman's obviously unequal position in the labor force is reinforced by our society's stereotypes and by women's assigned roles at home and in the family. But it works in the other direction too, with a woman's position in the marketplace perpetuating the necessity for her to shoulder the major responsibilities of home and children. In view of the facts that the mean income of a working woman is roughly half that of a working man and that in 1973 women with five or more years of college earned almost 20% less than men with only four years of high school [29], who relinquishes a job when the spouse is transferred? Or when a child is ill? Or when the burden of domestic work is heavy [30]? In 1944, Gunnar Myrdal pointed out the parallels in our society between the treatment of blacks and of women in an appendix to An American Dilemma. He said that "as the Negro was awarded his 'place' in society, so there was a 'woman's place.' In both cases the rationalization was strongly believed that men, in confining them to this place did not act against the true interest of the subordinate groups. The myth of 'contented women' who did not want to have suffrage or other civil rights and equal opportunities, had the same social function as the myth of the 'contented Negro' " [31]. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND During World War II, when there was a severe manpower shortage, women were recruited to work at all kinds of jobs previously considered to be man's work. Rosie the Riveter was widely extolled. When the war was over, the men reclaimed their jobs in factories and railroads, and women were told to go home. In the 1950s, girls got married at younger ages, and American women became more fertile than they had been in the previous fifty years. Statistics were bandied Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
about in magazines to prove that it did not pay for a wife to work [25]. After the war, veterans returned to school under the GI Bill of Rights. By recruiting these men as students, library schools could get their share of the tuition money that was flowing. Librarianship intensified its efforts to put down the "little old lady" image. During the fifties and sixties libraries had become important, and recognition of their importance released an unprecedented flow of cash. Government and business invested in research. Federal funds sired library buildings, and the library cult of machineworship was ministered to by management engineers, computer experts, and the priests of
technocracy. Medical libraries participated in the funding largesse. Salaries for head librarians became reasonably competitive with administrative jobs in other fields, and head librarians took charge of substantial budgets. Whereas in 1950 83% of the large medical libraries in the 1972 survey had been headed by women, that figure had dropped to 40% less than twenty-five years later. During those years, there were known incidents in which experienced female librarians were eliminated from consideration for prestigious positions, and even, sometimes, were told that the reason they did not receive these appointments was that they were women. There have also been confessions to this effect from the men who did get the jobs and from members of search committees and administration. CURRENT TRENDS In the 1970s we are witnessing broad societal changes that are having pronounced effects on professions and on the entire job marketplace. The old order of women in the employment market began to crumble on February 8, 1964, when the House of Representatives rocked with laughter as Howard Smith of Virginia introduced the word "sex" as an amendment to a bill outlawing racial discrimination in employment. He intended to laugh equal employment for blacks off the floor by coupling it with the notion of equal employment for women. But despite the jokes and the laughter, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was passed. This legislation banned discrimination based on sex, race, religion, and national origin. Initially women hesitated to file complaints, but the rising volume of inquiries to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission eventually
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surprised those who had insisted that women were content. Among the most difficult complaints were those dealing with state labor laws that many claimed were on the books in order to protect women. However, some of these laws, as the then governor, Nelson Rockfeller, discerned, "rather than protective of women, have proved protective of men." Laws limiting the number of hours and the night work a woman could do ended up saving the premium overtime pay for men. In times of recession men were allowed to do the lighter women's jobs, but a woman was "protected" from bumping a man if the law had defined the work as too difficult for her to perform. These are laws which forbid women to perform work on the job that they routinely do at home [25]. More than five years after affirmative action programs in colleges and universities were begun, The New York Times reported data on progress, but also pointed to continuing criticism and controversies. Admittedly, many of the overt discriminatory practices have disappeared, but there are still subtle forms of discrimination on campuses, complaints about the dearth of female and minority candidates, and concern regarding lowered standards and excessive costs. While critics bemoan the low supply of women Ph.D.'s, figures from the National Academy of Sciences show that women with doctorates in science, social science, and engineering have an unemployment rate that is three times that of men [32]. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education contended that academic standards would actually be raised in the long run by increasing the number of women, because faculty would be recruited from a larger pool of talent. The view that more women would inevitably lower quality is inconsistent with the evidence on their relative ability. The Carnegie Commission condemns the practice by some schools and departments of using affirmative action excuses as a convenient means to avoid informing a particular white male candidate that he simply was not the most qualified applicant [18]. Women's life span has been lengthened to an average of over seventy-five years. This, combined with the transition from population explosion to zero population growth, means that women no longer spend a large percentage of their lives in childbearing. People are marrying later, more marriages are breaking up, and more women have to support themselves, sometimes supporting children too. In 1974, according to figures from
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the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women accounted for 39% of the total U.S. work force. The old generalization that women lack commitment to their jobs and work only for luxuries is belied by the large percentage of working women who are single, widowed, divorced, or married with husband absent. It is also unwarranted to claim that a woman lacks commitment to her job because she is married and has economic security. Most men who have reached the upper executive positions have a great deal of economic security from their investments, inheritances, and other holdings. Certainly they are not known for their lack of commitment. The women's movement has helped to create a general atmosphere in which individuals and groups have been able to scrutinize their roles and stereotypes. We are now talking openly and bringing out of the closet problems that had not previously been dealt with in open forums. Attitudes are changing, and it is to be hoped that we are moving into an era in which the most important thing about a person is not his or her sex. As David Riesman said: "One is simply born a girl or a boy, and that is it. No worries about an activity's defeminizing or emasculating one" [25]. Sex is not a very constructive basis for organizing work flow, since it is much better suited to private life than to the office. Many women, and men too, are now determined to function as separate and equal members of society without assuming preconceived roles. Even Dr. Benjamin Spock has left out the stereotypes of boys' and girls' toys and tasks in the 1976 revision of the newborn's mother's bible, Baby and Child Care, which has potently influenced the upbringing of generations. Dr. Spock now actively promotes attitudes and behavior for parents that are designed to eliminate sexist bias. Educated women in increasing numbers are opting for the serious pursuit of lifelong careers. They are giving the lie to the old assumption that when a woman marries or has a child she will leave her job. Many younger women who for seventeen to twenty years have been competing with men in the classroom, developing their minds and initiative, studying the same subjects, and working at meaningful jobs, are rebelling at the idea of making an about-face in their ways of life to stay home and suddenly try to find deep fulfillment in what are, to husbands, after-hours occupations. Many women are looking for, and finding, ways of
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combining their home and work commitments into a continuous spectrum. They no longer consider a job as something that is merely done until the children are born and after they are grown up. Many men welcome the reciprocal opportunity to play a larger role in their children's development, and it has been observed that the husband's job is frequently no longer the automatic determinant of a family's geographic location [ 18, 33]. Even medicine is becoming a more congenial profession for women practitioners. What are the implications of these changes for librarians, especially health sciences librarians? And what influence is the present disproportionately small rate of women reaching the top of the profession likely to exert? Women are now being actively recruited into fields that had formerly displayed hostility toward them, and we are witnessing increasing opportunities for women in business. In the days when even superior women were discouraged from entering other professions, many became librarians. But will extremely able women continue to enter a field such as librarianship when its rewards are disproportionately and overwhelmingly reserved for men? Will gifted women with a bent for health sciences become medical librarians when they are being courted by medical schools? With high earning potentials in other fields, will they continue to enter a profession where it has been documented that pay levels and pay increments are not contingent upon job performance [34]? Nowadays the recruitment of head librarians for the largest and most prestigious libraries is carried out under affirmative action and equal opportunity programs. Search committees presumably look for women candidates as well as for men. Obviously a conscientious committee will search for women with previous experience in managing large libraries. What do they find when they look around? The same thing we found in the 1972 survey. In the middle-to-large-sized libraries and in the medical school libraries there are very few female head librarians-even fewer if you do not count those who will be retiring in a few years. With search committees now obliged to consider women candidates, the activities and trends of the last twenty-five to thirty years have created a situation akin to "Catch-22." After World War II, the flow of money into libraries bore a large share of the responsibility for subsequent male predominance in the profession. With the severe budgetary cuts of the last few
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years, Anita Schiller has mused that perhaps it will be lack of money rather than affirmative action that will refeminize the leadership of libraries
[3]. COURSES OF ACTION Several library groups have begun to react. In 1970, an SRRT Task Force, now called the Task Force on Women, of the American Library Association was established to respond to the publicized widespread inequalities in library employment. This task force publishes a newsletter, conducts special conferences, puts out a biweekly job list for women who are looking for supervisory and management positions, and has been active in getting the ALA to do something about its use of sexist terminology. In 1971 the ALA passed a resolution on equal opportunity for women, and in 1976 the Executive Board established an Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship and has indicated that the ALA will officially survey the sexual and ethnic composition of library staffs by job and salary levels. In 1974 the Special Libraries Association adopted a resolution calling for equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for promotion to higher administrative jobs in special libraries. The SLA then embarked on a campaign to educate members, and others, regarding these rights. The Special Committee on the Pilot Educational Project has prepared a widely distributed pamphlet on equal pay and put together program packets and tapes for use in chapter programs. SLA chapters are being encouraged to devote meetings to these issues. In various parts of the country, regional and local groups, such as the New York Library Association's Ad Hoc Committee on Concerns of Women, have been formed. As there is such an obvious dichotomy between those who staff our libraries and those who run them, it would seem that the position of head librarian merits a thorough job analysis. Promotion to the top has not necessarily been from within the ranks of those who have worked their way up, gaining years of experience in actual library services. As a first step in assuring the ascent of the most qualified people to run our libraries, we should determine what kind of experience and training are really needed. We need to cooperate with library schools and pressure them, if necessary, to provide graduates with the requisite skills. Industrial programs can serve as models for
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management training education that is of a caliber to warrant official recognition. On the other hand, if intensive analysis reveals that medical library administration requires an education different from that of the trained medical librarian, and that the administrator needs only minimal acquaintance with librarianship, let us come right out and say so, and recruit men and women accordingly. In many professions the protdgd system promotes the continuity of leadership. The sponsorprotege relationship can be effective in the training of personnel, but it can also inhibit advancement of women, because although a professional man might even prefer having a female assistant, he usually finds it more acceptable to identify a male candidate as his eventual successor [24]. Let us work to make sure that affirmative action is not just window-dressing, and that neither a protege nor a member of the "old-boy network" will be chosen for a position while qualified women applicants serve only as affirmative action statistics, rather than being serious contenders. Many assumptions are made about a woman's mobility and her willingness to undertake responsibilities. It is the right of every candidate, man or woman, to decide whether or not he or she is willing to relocate. Let us not preempt each individual candidate's prerogative to choose whether or not to move or to take on new
responsibilities. Deeply ingrained attitudes that produce inadvertent discrimination call for a heightened sense of consciousness. We, ourselves, need to collect and publicize data about hospital, nursing, and other health sciences libraries because we cannot rely fully on ALA data and surveys, as health sciences librarians do not show up distinctly and tend to get lumped in with "special" or "other." We must be aware of what is happening in order to reject invalid assumptions and focus on situations that perpetuate inequality. Men and women will always continue to be different in some respects, but it is likely that in the years ahead the life styles and work patterns for both men and women will become more diversified. Men will be facing some of the same pressures of dual responsibilities that until now have been the province of women. Some career patterns will include interrupted employment. Let us exercise leadership as a profession by innovating and by promoting constructive programs. Among the suggestions that have been put forward are: to make imaginative use of part-time
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professional staff and arranging for two people to share one job, thus enabling librarians with family commitments to continue gaining experience; to keep temporarily unemployed librarians informed of developments in areas of their specialty and of general professional concerns; to sponsor courses for renewing skills; and to make reentry into the job market smoother [35]. These approaches are fraught with difficulty and problems, especially in times of shrinking budgets; nevertheless, since such a large proportion of the library work force already does confront these responsibilities, a constructive approach might even result in improved general library services. Many capable librarians are not interested in moving into administration, but they do deserve recognition and promotion. Present library structures do not offer many opportunities to accord suitable status and rewards for excellence in performing library activities without climbing up the administrative hierarchy. A movement towards participatory policy making, combined with allowing greater latitude for experienced professionals to exercise individual judgment, may lead the way to a horizontal reward system, as well as inject a variety of expertise into decision making. In addition to endorsing and supporting ALA activities, the Medical Library Association should decide whether or not to assume a role in advising members who are faced with possible discrimination. While the association may not have the resources to provide actual help, it could supply information and direct such individuals to sources where assistance would be available. John Stuart Mill perceived that if women were permitted the free choice of occupation and were given the same encouragement as was given to other human beings, we could all expect to benefit from the "doubling of the mass of mental faculty available for the highest service of humanity" [36]. The issue of women's role in biomedical librarianship cannot be dismissed as a woman's problem. It is a problem for all-for those in the majority, for the minorities, for both men and women who have been frustrated in attempts to advance within the profession, and also for those who have no administrative ambitions. It is an issue that is relevant to men, to blacks, and to anyone else who may not get serious consideration for a job because of stereotypes that bear no relationship to his or her individual ability to do the work in question. Many years ago, a librarian observed that "whenever a man is appointed to a Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
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position when a better qualified woman (or better qualified man, for that matter) is available, an injury is done not only to the institution in question but also to the profession. Anything that hurts the profession, in the long run hurts the men in it as well as the women" [37]. All librarians as individuals, and the MLA as our professional voice, should squarely face these issues and work to enhance the quality of future leadership in health sciences libraries. REFERENCES 1. From the Medical Library Association. Telephone communication, April 28, 1976. 2. GOLDSTEIN, R. K., AND HILL, D. R. The status of women in the administration of health science libraries. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 63: 386-395, Oct. 1975. 3. SCHILLER, A. R. Women in librarianship. Adv. Librarianship4: 103-127, 1974. 4. Problems. Wilson Bull. Librarians 8: 230-231, Dec. 1933. 5. The weaker sex? [Editorial.] Libr. J. 63: 232, Mar. 15, 1938. 6. SAVORD, R. Men vs. women. Libr. J. 63: 342-343, May 1, 1938. 7. LIGHTFOOT, R. M. Further discussion. Libr. J. 63: 438, June 1, 1938. 8. GERHARDT, L. N. Melvil! Thou shouldst be living. Libr. J. 96: 2567, Sept. 1, 1971. 9. For a summary of statistical studies illustrating the underrepresentation of women in chief administrative positions of these types of libraries, see: SCHILLER, A. R. Op. cit. p. 112-116. 10. SCHILLER, A. R. Characteristics of Professional Personnel in College and University Libraries. Springfield, Illinois State Library, 1969. 11. Few minorities in Minn.; low pay for women. Libr. J. 101: 1077, May 1, 1976. 12. SLA salary survey 1973. Spec. Libr. 64: 594-628, Dec. 1973. 13. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. OFFICE FOR LIBRARY PERSONNEL RESOURCES. Survey of Graduates and Faculty of U.S. Library Education
Programs Awarding Degrees and Certificates, 1973-1974. Chicago, American Library Association, 1975. Mimeographed. 14. HANDLER, A. Decennial Census Data for Selected Health Occupations, U.S., 1970. Rockville, Maryland, National Center for Health Statistics, 1975. p. 3. 15. GRIMM, J. W., AND STERN, R. N. Sex roles and internal labor market structure: the "female" semi-professions. Soc. Probl. 21: 690-705, June 1974. 16. ETZIONI, A., ed. The Semi-Professions and Their Organization. New York, Free Press, 1969.
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17. ROSENBLATT, A., et al. Predominance of male authors in social work publications. Soc. Casework 51: 421-430, July 1970. 18. CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON HIGHER EDUCATION. Opportunities for Women in Higher Education. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1973. 19. APPELBAUM, A. L. Women in health care administration. Hospitals 49: 52-59, Aug. 1975. 20. GORDON, T. L., AND DUBE, W. F. Medical student enrollment, 1971-72 through 1975-76. J. Med. Educ. 51: 144-146, Feb. 1976. 21. JOLLY, H. P., AND LARSON, T. A. Participation of Women and Minorities on U.S. Medical School Faculties. Washington, D.C., Association of American Medical Colleges, 1976. 22. HORN, Z. CLA conference revisited: myths about women managers and libraries as businesses. Wilson Libr. Bull. 49: 40-42, Sept. 1974. 23. MACCOBY, E. E., AND JACKLIN, C. N. The Psychology of Sex Differences. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1974. p. 349-374. 24. EPSTEIN, C. F. Woman's Place. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1970. 25. BIRD, C. Born Female; the High Cost of Keeping Women Down. Rev. ed. New York, McKay, 1970. 26. SCHUMAN, P., AND DETLEFSON, G. Sisterhood is serious; an annotated bibliography. Libr. J. 96: 2587-2594, Sept. 1, 1971. 27. RENSHAW, J. E. Gynecologic problems of working women. Woman Physician 25: 222-224, April 1970. 28. SYMONDS, A. Neurotic dependency in successful women. J. Amer. Acad. Psychoanal. 4: 95-103, Jan. 1976. 29. GRANT, W. V., AND LIND, C. G. Digest of Education Statistics, 1975. Washington, D.C., National Center for Education Statistics, 1976. p. 21. 30. ZIEM, G. Introduction to the theme: women and health. Int. J. Health Serv. 5(2): 167-171, 1975. 31. MYRDAL, G. An American Dilemma. 20th anniversary ed. New York, Harper & Row, 1962. p. 1077. 32. New York Times, December 28, 1975. p. 23. 33. HOLMSTROM, L. L. Career patterns of married couples. In: Theodore, A., ed. The Professional Woman. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Schenkman Publishing Co., 1971. p. 516-524. 34. WAHBA, S. P. Part II: Women in libraries; a longitudinal study of career pay of men and women librarians. Law Libr. J. 69: 223-231, May 1976. 35. FREEDMAN, J. Liberated librarians: a look at the second sex in the library profession. Libr. J. 95: 1709-171 1, May 1, 1970. 36. MILL, J. S. The subjection of women. In: Bosmajian, H., and Bosmajian, H., eds. This Great Argument: The Rights of Women. Reading, Massachusetts, Addison-Wesley, 1972. p. 64-65. 37. HUNT, M. L. Men vs. women. Libr. J. 63: 342, May 1, 1938.
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Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library Mount Sinai School of Medicine of The City University of New York New York, New York ABSTRACT
In biomedical libraries, as in other areas of librarianship, women continue to be underrepresented in administrative positions. This paper reviews some of the factors contributing to the present situation and discusses implications and suggested courses of action for health sciences librarians.
overall number of women who made up the librarian work force. In the 140 libraries, a total of 893 women were employed as librarians. Six percent of these women were there as head librarians. Two hundred sixty-one male librarians worked in these same libraries, but over 30% of them were there in a head librarian capacity. Within the last generation there has been a steady trend of men replacing women in the administration of health sciences libraries. While only 40% of these libraries were headed by women in 1972, in 1950, 83% were. At that time, women made up about 89% of the library profession, and they headed up medical libraries in reasonable proportion to their total numbers within the field. The predominance of women as librarians has remained relatively stable since 1950 and still accounts for over 80%, but the percent of women as head librarians in medical libraries has obviously declined radically. These libraries have not been resurveyed since 1972. However, an informal picture of what has happened to the heads of medical school libraries during the last few years emerges from a review of listings in the most recent Medical Library Association and Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) directories and of MLA News announcements. Almost 30% of the libraries were either founded since 1972 or have different head librarians. Nevertheless, the ratio of men to women as heads of medical school libraries remains virtually unchanged. In the last four years men have continued to assume over 60% of the new or vacated positions.
THE role of women in biomedical libraries is not of concern to women only. It is a professional problem affecting all who care about the future of our libraries. Approximately 85% of the individual members of the Medical Library Association are women [1]. In 1972 Goldstein and Hill [2] surveyed the largest health sciences libraries in the United States to ascertain the extent to which women participated in their administration. While the inquiry was limited to the largest, it did include all medical school libraries. In the 140 libraries that responded, women librarians outnumbered men three to one. However, in these very same libraries almost 60% of the head librarians were men. In other words, although the total librarian population was over 75% female, women did not hold even half of the top positions. In the medical school libraries, over 78% of the librarians were women, but fewer than 34% of the head librarians were. This disproportion of women in administration becomes even more conspicuous in the largest libraries, where there were three women employed for every man. Among the head librarians of this group the ratio was exactly reversed; head librarians were three to one male. In the smallest libraries, women made up an even larger proportion of the staff, over 83%, and they WOMEN IN LIBRARIANSHIP held 75% of the top jobs. This was the group where The role of women in health sciences libraries is women held more head librarian positions than men did, but even so, not in proportion to the not unique. It is comparable to what prevails in the rest of the profession. Librarianship was once *Based on a paper presented June 16, 1976, at the a masculine preserve. One does not picture Seventy-fifth Annual Meeting of the Medical Library women in charge of the Alexandrian Scrolls or of Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Renaissance collections, and in nineteenth Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
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century America, running a library was considered a man's job. At the first convention of the American Library Association in 1876 almost 90% of the attendees were men. Melvil Dewey opened the library school at Columbia in 1887 with women making up the majority of the students. Employing women in "Library Economy," as the field was then called, was perceived as an effective way to get maximum service for a limited financial outlay. Dewey rationalized that lower salaries for women were appropriate because of their poor health, lack of business training, lack of permanence, and their receiving other considerations from men because of their sex. Only a few years earlier, Justin Winsor had extolled the advantages of women in libraries because "they soften our atmosphere, they lighten our labour, they are equal to our work," and the "pick of the educated young women" were available at very low pay [3]. By 1920, 90% of the librarians in this country were women, and the familiar stereotype of the librarian took shape: a middle-aged, unfashionablydressed, bespectacled lady with hair pulled back into a bun, who spent much of her time silencing exuberant expressions within her domain. The Wilson Bulletin for Librarians speculated on whether "the preponderance of women in the American library profession [should] be considered an evil?" [4]. But a 1938 editorial in Library Journal condemned the undue emphasis that had been placed on recruiting young men for administrative positions, claiming that "the library profession is going backward when it practically closes the doors of its best positions to women." The editors contended that if the trend continued "it would become increasingly difficult to attract (and retain) capable young women ... and it will by no means follow that young men of equal ability will come in to take their places" [5]. In the ensuing discussion the hope was expressed that this open debate would prod the profession into facing up to the apparent discrimination against women's advancement and would result in some action, as "a generation of capable women are being passed over in favor of young men who have yet to serve their normal period of apprenticeship" [6]. There were those who felt it was only right for men to receive a disproportionate share of the better library jobs, as they possessed more ability. One individual reasoned that since the library profession was so clearly identified as a woman's field and many men would fear that their 322
masculinity would be questioned if they entered the profession, "only men with a genuine love for library work" are willing to brave this suspicion. "The fact that this prejudice does not exist among women .. means that large numbers of girls on the lookout for what they consider an easy job, study library science." He further rationalized that the low pay for librarians effectively weeded out the poorly equipped men, but left poorly equipped women. Male librarians not good enough to get the better paying positions could easily switch to other lines of work where they would earn more, while women would get equally low pay elsewhere, and would therefore be content to hold poor jobs in libraries [7]. The debate in the pages of Library Journal did not have the salubrious results that had been desired, for in 1971 they devoted a whole issue to the same subject and editorialized about it again, this time abandoning the genteel tones of 1938. Speaking out against laws and practices that locked women into low level jobs, the editorial denounced the "dubious protection" that resulted in fully qualified female librarians getting stuck with an "overload of clerical chores in a tender effort by their male administrators to shield them from tilting heavy glasses with trustees at play ... The younger women are now determined to belly up to the bar with the best or die drunk trying"
[8].
A pattern of women's job levels, status, and salary runs through the entire field. In every category women are underrepresented in the top policy-making jobs as compared to their proportion of the work force in that category. Whether one looks at public, academic, or special libraries, as the size of the library increases there are fewer women administering it [9]. Salary studies of a variety of library specialty groups all show that women earn lower salaries with the same level of education as men, and both with and without experience. Even women with doctoral degrees earn significantly less than men at every age level, and salary differentials between men and women broaden with experience. Anita Schiller's landmark study of academic librarians documented that among those with less than five years of professional experience, the median salary for women was 92% of what the men were earning with that level of experience. But among those with twenty or more years of experience, women earned only 70% as much as male librarians with the same level of experience [10]. In Minnesota, a survey of public library Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
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members of the Minnesota Library Association showed that while there were over six women in this group for every man, the men made aii average salary of $17,911 while the women's average was $11,784. The survey found that the higher salaries did not necessarily correlate with longterm professional experience [11]. It is difficult to assess whether changes are taking place in response to the generally increased awareness of salary inequities. The Special Libraries Association salary surveys of 1970 and 1973 show that average salaries for special librarians were higher in 1973. However, the mean salaries for women remained at about 75% of those for men [12]. The outlook for the future is that librarianship will continue to be overwhelmingly female for quite some time to come. According to data released by the American Library Association, women still receive over 80% of the degrees awarded in library education programs in the United States [13]. WOMEN IN OTHER PROFESSIONS Biomedical librarians are part of the health service industry, and it is instructive to look at the role of women in some other health care related professions. Numerically, women dominate the health occupations. They represent 71% of all persons employed; yet they account for less than 9% of the group with the highest status and income, namely, physicians, dentists, veterinarians, optometrists, and related practitioners. Women
still constitute approximately 97% of the nursing profession [14]. Men hold a small number of available nursing administration positions, but there has been a discernible rate of increase in the percent of men occupying these jobs which exceeds the rate of increase of men in the total nursing population. In other words, the greatest rate of increase of male representation within nursing is in the top administrative sector [15]. Social work, like librarianship and nursing, has been generally referred to by sociologists as a "female" profession, one in which the percentage of women in the field exceeds the percentage of women employed in the labor force as a whole.
work, which at one time frequently had women deans, were found by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education to be almost exclusively headed by men in late 1971 [18]. Within each of the "female" professions, when there is an increasing demand for administrators, it intensifies the tendency of men to dominate the field. While men do not dominate numerically they tend to do so through their entry into the administrative sectors [15]. Nurses played a leading role in administering hospitals in the early part of the modern period. They added the responsibilities of supply, feeding, and housekeeping to their nursing duties. Nowadays, over 70% of Catholicsponsored hospitals have female administrators, but women are much less evident in top management positions of non-Catholic voluntary community hospitals. In 1973, the Commission on Education for Health Administration found that women were grossly underrepresented among the students and faculty of health administration. Among recent graduates of health administration programs, men are significantly more likely to secure hospital positions. A larger proportion of the male graduates moved into line administrative jobs, while the female graduates tended to end up in research, program analysis, and planning, rather than in management per se [19]. Only a small percentage of practicing physicians in the United States are women; in 1970, approximately 9% were. However, during the last few years their enrollment in U.S. medical schools has increased rapidly, by 140% since the 1971/72 school year, and in 1975/76, 24% of all first-year students were women [20]. In the last twenty-five years, the percentage of women appointed to medical school faculties has grown from 11% to over 18% [21].
SEX STEREOTYPES Broad assumptions about men's and women's general characteristics have played a large part in getting us all into the present situation. Stereotypes are so tenacious and widespread that we assume that they are based on biology, that they are inevitable, and that they are grounded in These are Amitai Etzioni's so-called "semi- documentation. Some widely held beliefs are: professions" [16]. Among members of the Na- women are overemotional and have poor judgtional Association of Social Workers, men are ment; women executives are aggressive and untwice as likely as women to hold general adminis- feminine; women are absent more than men and trative jobs. Although three out of four need less money and less status; neither men nor professional staff members are women, between women want to be supervised by women; women 1957 and 1967 the proportion of women executives are domineering but also weak [22]. Developmental psychologists have been doing decreased from 60% to 34% [17]. Schools of social
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extensive research to determine which beliefs regarding sex differences are supported by evidence. In studying infants and children they have found that girls are not more suggestible than boys and that they do not have lower self-esteem; that neither boys nor girls are better either at rote learning and simple repetitive tasks or at tasks that require higher levels of cognitive processing; and that girls do not lack achievement motivation. On the other hand, they have demonstrated that girls possess greater verbal ability than boys do, but that boys have more mathematical and visualspatial ability. Males are also more physically aggressive. Since intellectual aptitudes are comparable for both sexes, is physical aggressiveness the primary criterion for professional leadership? It is usually not the method employed among mature human beings. Even in business, negotiation and skills in achieving managerial consensus have replaced the iron-fisted tycoon of yesteryear [23]. Preconceived notions produce some rather strange results. Women who are said to "have intuition" and a gift for handling interpersonal relations are encouraged to become social workers; whereas men who work well with people are called "good diplomats" and are given important political and executive posts. A study of employment practices showed that women were denied advancement because employers felt that they were "too emotional," though no employer objected to the man who might "blow his stack." The sex-typing of occupations is frequently neither consistent nor logical, and there is historical evidence of occupations that have shifted in definition from male to female and vice versa. When the United States was still a pioneer country, primary school teaching was considered a male occupation. Women began to predominate, and public attitudes changed to bless the field as suitably feminine when the growing movement for mass education, combined with a shortage of men during the Civil War, created a demand for teachers that required the recruitment of women [24]. Once upon a time midwifery was a traditionally female job, and male assistance at childbirth was regarded as indecent. It is in relatively recent times that the delivery of a newborn has become essentially the domain of predominantly male medical practitioners [25]. The tenuous rationalizations about the appropriateness of certain occupations for men and women are post-factum explanations, and several of them show not only historical but also cultural 324
variability. There are significant differences among countries. In the United States medicine is considered a male profession, while in Russia women are actually channeled into this pursuit as it is considered appropriate and befitting their female talents. Our society contends that women cannot be good engineers or lawyers because they call for qualities which are not feminine. In Russia, about one-third of the lawyers and engineers are women, a situation suggesting that the differences called for are cultural rather than biological [24]. It is reputed that women's high rate of absenteeism and turnover are among the reasons they do not move into top administrative positions in any profession. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has concluded that absenteeism and turnover rates are more closely associated with the kind of job and its salary than with the sex of the jobholder, and studies show that turnover rates of men and women in libraries do not differ significantly [3]. According to a survey of the American Council on Education, in 1972/73 nearly onefourth of all teaching faculty had interrupted their professional careers for more than one year, and a greater percentage of men than of women had done so [18]. Some employers consider women poor risks because of their supposed tendencies to enter and leave the job market in relation to their childbearing. But what about the millions of women who work to exist? The single women? The heads of families? It has been proven that professional success, high status, and extensive training also increase vocational commitment [26]. Data from the 1972 survey of large medical libraries reveal that the women head librarians had occupied these positions in their institutions for an average of 10.6 years, while the mean length of stay of the men was 6.2 years, a difference of almost four and one-half years. Does this indicate that when a woman accepts the position of chief librarian she tends to stay with the job and make a commitment to the institution? Are our search committees looking for people who will make only a few years' commitment? Nevertheless, old myths die hard. There is no concrete evidence to show that menstrual, menopausal, or gynecological difficulties are the cause of employment problems. Most problems faced by working women are psychological in origin, the result of job frustrations and inequities [27]. In the traditional upbringing, part of achieving our cultural feminine ideal is learning how to Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
WOMEN AND HEALTH SCIENCES LIBRARIANSHIP repress direct hostility. As a result of deeply ingrained training, many a woman can remain pleasant and ingratiating with bosses and with those who have been promoted over her, even if she has been "passed over" repeatedly [28]. In October 1972 Ellen Gay Detlefson evoked groans of recognition when she spoke to the MLA New York Regional Group about the prevalence of "Mathildas" in our profession. They are the righthand women of male library administrators, the long-suffering first assistants, grateful at getting so far and not worrying why they have gotten no further. A woman's obviously unequal position in the labor force is reinforced by our society's stereotypes and by women's assigned roles at home and in the family. But it works in the other direction too, with a woman's position in the marketplace perpetuating the necessity for her to shoulder the major responsibilities of home and children. In view of the facts that the mean income of a working woman is roughly half that of a working man and that in 1973 women with five or more years of college earned almost 20% less than men with only four years of high school [29], who relinquishes a job when the spouse is transferred? Or when a child is ill? Or when the burden of domestic work is heavy [30]? In 1944, Gunnar Myrdal pointed out the parallels in our society between the treatment of blacks and of women in an appendix to An American Dilemma. He said that "as the Negro was awarded his 'place' in society, so there was a 'woman's place.' In both cases the rationalization was strongly believed that men, in confining them to this place did not act against the true interest of the subordinate groups. The myth of 'contented women' who did not want to have suffrage or other civil rights and equal opportunities, had the same social function as the myth of the 'contented Negro' " [31]. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND During World War II, when there was a severe manpower shortage, women were recruited to work at all kinds of jobs previously considered to be man's work. Rosie the Riveter was widely extolled. When the war was over, the men reclaimed their jobs in factories and railroads, and women were told to go home. In the 1950s, girls got married at younger ages, and American women became more fertile than they had been in the previous fifty years. Statistics were bandied Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
about in magazines to prove that it did not pay for a wife to work [25]. After the war, veterans returned to school under the GI Bill of Rights. By recruiting these men as students, library schools could get their share of the tuition money that was flowing. Librarianship intensified its efforts to put down the "little old lady" image. During the fifties and sixties libraries had become important, and recognition of their importance released an unprecedented flow of cash. Government and business invested in research. Federal funds sired library buildings, and the library cult of machineworship was ministered to by management engineers, computer experts, and the priests of
technocracy. Medical libraries participated in the funding largesse. Salaries for head librarians became reasonably competitive with administrative jobs in other fields, and head librarians took charge of substantial budgets. Whereas in 1950 83% of the large medical libraries in the 1972 survey had been headed by women, that figure had dropped to 40% less than twenty-five years later. During those years, there were known incidents in which experienced female librarians were eliminated from consideration for prestigious positions, and even, sometimes, were told that the reason they did not receive these appointments was that they were women. There have also been confessions to this effect from the men who did get the jobs and from members of search committees and administration. CURRENT TRENDS In the 1970s we are witnessing broad societal changes that are having pronounced effects on professions and on the entire job marketplace. The old order of women in the employment market began to crumble on February 8, 1964, when the House of Representatives rocked with laughter as Howard Smith of Virginia introduced the word "sex" as an amendment to a bill outlawing racial discrimination in employment. He intended to laugh equal employment for blacks off the floor by coupling it with the notion of equal employment for women. But despite the jokes and the laughter, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was passed. This legislation banned discrimination based on sex, race, religion, and national origin. Initially women hesitated to file complaints, but the rising volume of inquiries to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission eventually
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surprised those who had insisted that women were content. Among the most difficult complaints were those dealing with state labor laws that many claimed were on the books in order to protect women. However, some of these laws, as the then governor, Nelson Rockfeller, discerned, "rather than protective of women, have proved protective of men." Laws limiting the number of hours and the night work a woman could do ended up saving the premium overtime pay for men. In times of recession men were allowed to do the lighter women's jobs, but a woman was "protected" from bumping a man if the law had defined the work as too difficult for her to perform. These are laws which forbid women to perform work on the job that they routinely do at home [25]. More than five years after affirmative action programs in colleges and universities were begun, The New York Times reported data on progress, but also pointed to continuing criticism and controversies. Admittedly, many of the overt discriminatory practices have disappeared, but there are still subtle forms of discrimination on campuses, complaints about the dearth of female and minority candidates, and concern regarding lowered standards and excessive costs. While critics bemoan the low supply of women Ph.D.'s, figures from the National Academy of Sciences show that women with doctorates in science, social science, and engineering have an unemployment rate that is three times that of men [32]. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education contended that academic standards would actually be raised in the long run by increasing the number of women, because faculty would be recruited from a larger pool of talent. The view that more women would inevitably lower quality is inconsistent with the evidence on their relative ability. The Carnegie Commission condemns the practice by some schools and departments of using affirmative action excuses as a convenient means to avoid informing a particular white male candidate that he simply was not the most qualified applicant [18]. Women's life span has been lengthened to an average of over seventy-five years. This, combined with the transition from population explosion to zero population growth, means that women no longer spend a large percentage of their lives in childbearing. People are marrying later, more marriages are breaking up, and more women have to support themselves, sometimes supporting children too. In 1974, according to figures from
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the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women accounted for 39% of the total U.S. work force. The old generalization that women lack commitment to their jobs and work only for luxuries is belied by the large percentage of working women who are single, widowed, divorced, or married with husband absent. It is also unwarranted to claim that a woman lacks commitment to her job because she is married and has economic security. Most men who have reached the upper executive positions have a great deal of economic security from their investments, inheritances, and other holdings. Certainly they are not known for their lack of commitment. The women's movement has helped to create a general atmosphere in which individuals and groups have been able to scrutinize their roles and stereotypes. We are now talking openly and bringing out of the closet problems that had not previously been dealt with in open forums. Attitudes are changing, and it is to be hoped that we are moving into an era in which the most important thing about a person is not his or her sex. As David Riesman said: "One is simply born a girl or a boy, and that is it. No worries about an activity's defeminizing or emasculating one" [25]. Sex is not a very constructive basis for organizing work flow, since it is much better suited to private life than to the office. Many women, and men too, are now determined to function as separate and equal members of society without assuming preconceived roles. Even Dr. Benjamin Spock has left out the stereotypes of boys' and girls' toys and tasks in the 1976 revision of the newborn's mother's bible, Baby and Child Care, which has potently influenced the upbringing of generations. Dr. Spock now actively promotes attitudes and behavior for parents that are designed to eliminate sexist bias. Educated women in increasing numbers are opting for the serious pursuit of lifelong careers. They are giving the lie to the old assumption that when a woman marries or has a child she will leave her job. Many younger women who for seventeen to twenty years have been competing with men in the classroom, developing their minds and initiative, studying the same subjects, and working at meaningful jobs, are rebelling at the idea of making an about-face in their ways of life to stay home and suddenly try to find deep fulfillment in what are, to husbands, after-hours occupations. Many women are looking for, and finding, ways of
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combining their home and work commitments into a continuous spectrum. They no longer consider a job as something that is merely done until the children are born and after they are grown up. Many men welcome the reciprocal opportunity to play a larger role in their children's development, and it has been observed that the husband's job is frequently no longer the automatic determinant of a family's geographic location [ 18, 33]. Even medicine is becoming a more congenial profession for women practitioners. What are the implications of these changes for librarians, especially health sciences librarians? And what influence is the present disproportionately small rate of women reaching the top of the profession likely to exert? Women are now being actively recruited into fields that had formerly displayed hostility toward them, and we are witnessing increasing opportunities for women in business. In the days when even superior women were discouraged from entering other professions, many became librarians. But will extremely able women continue to enter a field such as librarianship when its rewards are disproportionately and overwhelmingly reserved for men? Will gifted women with a bent for health sciences become medical librarians when they are being courted by medical schools? With high earning potentials in other fields, will they continue to enter a profession where it has been documented that pay levels and pay increments are not contingent upon job performance [34]? Nowadays the recruitment of head librarians for the largest and most prestigious libraries is carried out under affirmative action and equal opportunity programs. Search committees presumably look for women candidates as well as for men. Obviously a conscientious committee will search for women with previous experience in managing large libraries. What do they find when they look around? The same thing we found in the 1972 survey. In the middle-to-large-sized libraries and in the medical school libraries there are very few female head librarians-even fewer if you do not count those who will be retiring in a few years. With search committees now obliged to consider women candidates, the activities and trends of the last twenty-five to thirty years have created a situation akin to "Catch-22." After World War II, the flow of money into libraries bore a large share of the responsibility for subsequent male predominance in the profession. With the severe budgetary cuts of the last few
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years, Anita Schiller has mused that perhaps it will be lack of money rather than affirmative action that will refeminize the leadership of libraries
[3]. COURSES OF ACTION Several library groups have begun to react. In 1970, an SRRT Task Force, now called the Task Force on Women, of the American Library Association was established to respond to the publicized widespread inequalities in library employment. This task force publishes a newsletter, conducts special conferences, puts out a biweekly job list for women who are looking for supervisory and management positions, and has been active in getting the ALA to do something about its use of sexist terminology. In 1971 the ALA passed a resolution on equal opportunity for women, and in 1976 the Executive Board established an Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship and has indicated that the ALA will officially survey the sexual and ethnic composition of library staffs by job and salary levels. In 1974 the Special Libraries Association adopted a resolution calling for equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for promotion to higher administrative jobs in special libraries. The SLA then embarked on a campaign to educate members, and others, regarding these rights. The Special Committee on the Pilot Educational Project has prepared a widely distributed pamphlet on equal pay and put together program packets and tapes for use in chapter programs. SLA chapters are being encouraged to devote meetings to these issues. In various parts of the country, regional and local groups, such as the New York Library Association's Ad Hoc Committee on Concerns of Women, have been formed. As there is such an obvious dichotomy between those who staff our libraries and those who run them, it would seem that the position of head librarian merits a thorough job analysis. Promotion to the top has not necessarily been from within the ranks of those who have worked their way up, gaining years of experience in actual library services. As a first step in assuring the ascent of the most qualified people to run our libraries, we should determine what kind of experience and training are really needed. We need to cooperate with library schools and pressure them, if necessary, to provide graduates with the requisite skills. Industrial programs can serve as models for
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management training education that is of a caliber to warrant official recognition. On the other hand, if intensive analysis reveals that medical library administration requires an education different from that of the trained medical librarian, and that the administrator needs only minimal acquaintance with librarianship, let us come right out and say so, and recruit men and women accordingly. In many professions the protdgd system promotes the continuity of leadership. The sponsorprotege relationship can be effective in the training of personnel, but it can also inhibit advancement of women, because although a professional man might even prefer having a female assistant, he usually finds it more acceptable to identify a male candidate as his eventual successor [24]. Let us work to make sure that affirmative action is not just window-dressing, and that neither a protege nor a member of the "old-boy network" will be chosen for a position while qualified women applicants serve only as affirmative action statistics, rather than being serious contenders. Many assumptions are made about a woman's mobility and her willingness to undertake responsibilities. It is the right of every candidate, man or woman, to decide whether or not he or she is willing to relocate. Let us not preempt each individual candidate's prerogative to choose whether or not to move or to take on new
responsibilities. Deeply ingrained attitudes that produce inadvertent discrimination call for a heightened sense of consciousness. We, ourselves, need to collect and publicize data about hospital, nursing, and other health sciences libraries because we cannot rely fully on ALA data and surveys, as health sciences librarians do not show up distinctly and tend to get lumped in with "special" or "other." We must be aware of what is happening in order to reject invalid assumptions and focus on situations that perpetuate inequality. Men and women will always continue to be different in some respects, but it is likely that in the years ahead the life styles and work patterns for both men and women will become more diversified. Men will be facing some of the same pressures of dual responsibilities that until now have been the province of women. Some career patterns will include interrupted employment. Let us exercise leadership as a profession by innovating and by promoting constructive programs. Among the suggestions that have been put forward are: to make imaginative use of part-time
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professional staff and arranging for two people to share one job, thus enabling librarians with family commitments to continue gaining experience; to keep temporarily unemployed librarians informed of developments in areas of their specialty and of general professional concerns; to sponsor courses for renewing skills; and to make reentry into the job market smoother [35]. These approaches are fraught with difficulty and problems, especially in times of shrinking budgets; nevertheless, since such a large proportion of the library work force already does confront these responsibilities, a constructive approach might even result in improved general library services. Many capable librarians are not interested in moving into administration, but they do deserve recognition and promotion. Present library structures do not offer many opportunities to accord suitable status and rewards for excellence in performing library activities without climbing up the administrative hierarchy. A movement towards participatory policy making, combined with allowing greater latitude for experienced professionals to exercise individual judgment, may lead the way to a horizontal reward system, as well as inject a variety of expertise into decision making. In addition to endorsing and supporting ALA activities, the Medical Library Association should decide whether or not to assume a role in advising members who are faced with possible discrimination. While the association may not have the resources to provide actual help, it could supply information and direct such individuals to sources where assistance would be available. John Stuart Mill perceived that if women were permitted the free choice of occupation and were given the same encouragement as was given to other human beings, we could all expect to benefit from the "doubling of the mass of mental faculty available for the highest service of humanity" [36]. The issue of women's role in biomedical librarianship cannot be dismissed as a woman's problem. It is a problem for all-for those in the majority, for the minorities, for both men and women who have been frustrated in attempts to advance within the profession, and also for those who have no administrative ambitions. It is an issue that is relevant to men, to blacks, and to anyone else who may not get serious consideration for a job because of stereotypes that bear no relationship to his or her individual ability to do the work in question. Many years ago, a librarian observed that "whenever a man is appointed to a Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
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position when a better qualified woman (or better qualified man, for that matter) is available, an injury is done not only to the institution in question but also to the profession. Anything that hurts the profession, in the long run hurts the men in it as well as the women" [37]. All librarians as individuals, and the MLA as our professional voice, should squarely face these issues and work to enhance the quality of future leadership in health sciences libraries. REFERENCES 1. From the Medical Library Association. Telephone communication, April 28, 1976. 2. GOLDSTEIN, R. K., AND HILL, D. R. The status of women in the administration of health science libraries. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 63: 386-395, Oct. 1975. 3. SCHILLER, A. R. Women in librarianship. Adv. Librarianship4: 103-127, 1974. 4. Problems. Wilson Bull. Librarians 8: 230-231, Dec. 1933. 5. The weaker sex? [Editorial.] Libr. J. 63: 232, Mar. 15, 1938. 6. SAVORD, R. Men vs. women. Libr. J. 63: 342-343, May 1, 1938. 7. LIGHTFOOT, R. M. Further discussion. Libr. J. 63: 438, June 1, 1938. 8. GERHARDT, L. N. Melvil! Thou shouldst be living. Libr. J. 96: 2567, Sept. 1, 1971. 9. For a summary of statistical studies illustrating the underrepresentation of women in chief administrative positions of these types of libraries, see: SCHILLER, A. R. Op. cit. p. 112-116. 10. SCHILLER, A. R. Characteristics of Professional Personnel in College and University Libraries. Springfield, Illinois State Library, 1969. 11. Few minorities in Minn.; low pay for women. Libr. J. 101: 1077, May 1, 1976. 12. SLA salary survey 1973. Spec. Libr. 64: 594-628, Dec. 1973. 13. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. OFFICE FOR LIBRARY PERSONNEL RESOURCES. Survey of Graduates and Faculty of U.S. Library Education
Programs Awarding Degrees and Certificates, 1973-1974. Chicago, American Library Association, 1975. Mimeographed. 14. HANDLER, A. Decennial Census Data for Selected Health Occupations, U.S., 1970. Rockville, Maryland, National Center for Health Statistics, 1975. p. 3. 15. GRIMM, J. W., AND STERN, R. N. Sex roles and internal labor market structure: the "female" semi-professions. Soc. Probl. 21: 690-705, June 1974. 16. ETZIONI, A., ed. The Semi-Professions and Their Organization. New York, Free Press, 1969.
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17. ROSENBLATT, A., et al. Predominance of male authors in social work publications. Soc. Casework 51: 421-430, July 1970. 18. CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON HIGHER EDUCATION. Opportunities for Women in Higher Education. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1973. 19. APPELBAUM, A. L. Women in health care administration. Hospitals 49: 52-59, Aug. 1975. 20. GORDON, T. L., AND DUBE, W. F. Medical student enrollment, 1971-72 through 1975-76. J. Med. Educ. 51: 144-146, Feb. 1976. 21. JOLLY, H. P., AND LARSON, T. A. Participation of Women and Minorities on U.S. Medical School Faculties. Washington, D.C., Association of American Medical Colleges, 1976. 22. HORN, Z. CLA conference revisited: myths about women managers and libraries as businesses. Wilson Libr. Bull. 49: 40-42, Sept. 1974. 23. MACCOBY, E. E., AND JACKLIN, C. N. The Psychology of Sex Differences. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1974. p. 349-374. 24. EPSTEIN, C. F. Woman's Place. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1970. 25. BIRD, C. Born Female; the High Cost of Keeping Women Down. Rev. ed. New York, McKay, 1970. 26. SCHUMAN, P., AND DETLEFSON, G. Sisterhood is serious; an annotated bibliography. Libr. J. 96: 2587-2594, Sept. 1, 1971. 27. RENSHAW, J. E. Gynecologic problems of working women. Woman Physician 25: 222-224, April 1970. 28. SYMONDS, A. Neurotic dependency in successful women. J. Amer. Acad. Psychoanal. 4: 95-103, Jan. 1976. 29. GRANT, W. V., AND LIND, C. G. Digest of Education Statistics, 1975. Washington, D.C., National Center for Education Statistics, 1976. p. 21. 30. ZIEM, G. Introduction to the theme: women and health. Int. J. Health Serv. 5(2): 167-171, 1975. 31. MYRDAL, G. An American Dilemma. 20th anniversary ed. New York, Harper & Row, 1962. p. 1077. 32. New York Times, December 28, 1975. p. 23. 33. HOLMSTROM, L. L. Career patterns of married couples. In: Theodore, A., ed. The Professional Woman. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Schenkman Publishing Co., 1971. p. 516-524. 34. WAHBA, S. P. Part II: Women in libraries; a longitudinal study of career pay of men and women librarians. Law Libr. J. 69: 223-231, May 1976. 35. FREEDMAN, J. Liberated librarians: a look at the second sex in the library profession. Libr. J. 95: 1709-171 1, May 1, 1970. 36. MILL, J. S. The subjection of women. In: Bosmajian, H., and Bosmajian, H., eds. This Great Argument: The Rights of Women. Reading, Massachusetts, Addison-Wesley, 1972. p. 64-65. 37. HUNT, M. L. Men vs. women. Libr. J. 63: 342, May 1, 1938.
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