Comments on: 2.0: Where are the women?

By: Anne Beaumont

Anne Beaumont — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:47:50 +0000

The programme committee for the VALA conferences http://www.vala.org.au/previous.htm tries not only for a reasonable gender balance (the last 3 have been 1/3 women as Keynotes) but also to ensure representation from outside North America and Europe. For our next conference (2008) we are looking for contributors from Africa &/or South America.
Would be really nice if we could find women keynotes from outside North America & Europe.

By: Anna

Anna — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:38:41 +0000

K. McCook: I tried to sign up for the COSWL action list a few moments ago, but I got a message back saying that it is closed. Maybe that’s why it’s not relevant?

By: kgs

kgs — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 02:05:17 +0000

Fiona, one issue you touch on in your excellent comment that I’ve been thinking about is the problem of the burned-out, stretched-out token female. You’re constantly watching your back (oooh, that shameless hussy, let’s trash her ideas!), often feeling obligated to accept as many “opportunities” as possible (if I don’t do it, who will represent our gender, etc.), and as you point out, grimly trying to actually *implement* technology services in library settings, which in many organizations is a little crazy-making to begin with.

By: Fiona (infoaddict)

Fiona (infoaddict) — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 01:40:15 +0000

There’s also the small fact that even the most geeky of librarians can fall prey to to the “My eye teeth for a boring life!” syndrome and end up valuing comfort over evangelism, even for 12 months. As someone who vacillates from pure IT to library and back again, I can testify that even tech librarianism (er??) is far more comfortable than being a woman in the male-edged world of “pure IT”. It’s very easy to sit back on one’s (admittedly earned) laurels and be awarded street cred just for knowing what blogs, RSS, wikis, Web 2.0 ARE. Then taking up the fight to have them taken as serious tools of the trade becomes way too much like hard work when, from bitter experience, you know you’ve got an uphill battle just persuading the IT managers to give the librarians unrestricted access to Teh Intarweb, rather than automatically blocking anything that doesn’t look like “real” work (image sites can’t possibly be associated with real work, you see; neither can news sites, or institution blogs, and so on).

So one ends up coasting along just on top of the wave, knowing but not implementing; talking but not fighting. And certainly not volunteering to put in the effort required to become Library 2.0 in the flesh because heaven knows, it’s hard enough just doing it online.

Hmmm … there’s a thought I just had (sorry for the ramble!). We geeklibrarians are more or less where the very first real geeks were at when the Web was new. Are we all so comfortable online that the thought of having to literally “press the flesh” gives us the screaming horrors? The boys have been doing it longer; they’ve learnt to overcome the stereotype. Female geeks, however, had to come to the stereotype from the other side; from the side of the “naturally gregarious”, and some of us clutch our hard-won reputations for anti-sociability rather close to our MacBooks.

And now we’re expected to get out there and be role models?? *boot quake*

Give us a couple more years to learn about this sociability thing - THEN we can take over the worulld! (What are we doing today, Pinky??).

By: Christina Pikas

Christina Pikas — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 13:48:59 +0000

Marcia Bates used her acceptance speech at ASIS&T last year to discuss the treatment of women professors in LIS. From what I understand others remember her time at Maryland differently than she does, but at least her perception was that male professors were given better teaching assignments and more freedom to do research.

So do men in ASIS&T have more cred than women, too? I don’t think so because many of the articles we rely heavily upon in our training were written by women (Bates, Kuhlthau, Tenopir, etc), but I think Bates disagrees.

By: Lazygal

Lazygal — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 10:49:19 +0000

It’s not just technology. The AASL Conference in Pittsburg had a similar problem: http://www.noodletools.com/aasl/archives/138 . As Doug Johnson says, “For a good old girls club, AASL is sending some pretty strange messages. Men have cred; women don’t. Academics are worth listening to; the practitioner ain’t.” Apparently it’s a case of the apple (AASL) not falling far from the tree (ALA). Ditto LITA and the other “apples”.

By: Sarah Houghton (LiB)

Sarah Houghton (LiB) — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 00:29:53 +0000

It’s who has enough of an “in” into the old boys’ club to push the door wide open. It’s a statistical lack of women in technology. It’s who has the perceived confidence or authority to speak, to have voice, be it in-person or in a published format. It’s who has the types of jobs (management, academic library) that will fund and/or encourage participation in these activities. I’m female and in a female-dominated field, though in a male-dominated sub-set of that field (technology). That’s enough to garner me my fair share of unwanted attention in a bad way, but not enough to garner attention in a good way as a rare female-tech-commodity? It is frustrating not to have very many women kinfolk to banter with about L2.0, “all your base,” and FRBR. I think the answer is to encourage each other, to make fellow women understand that having a voice, speaking to others, isn’t all that big, bad, or scary. And getting the people in positions of editorial power (be they themselves male or female) to understand that one doesn’t have to be male and greying to speak to have a valid voice in the first place. And Roy–yet again, I must admit publicly that you rock so hard the windows shake.

By: Pat Carson

Pat Carson — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 13:25:42 +0000

I’m pretty new to blogging. When I first put up posts, I used my initials - I hesitated to put my full name out into the online world. Who was I, after all? What had I published?

Most people have a lot of balls in the air - job, home, and children - and it’s hard to find the time to move out of your local space. Blogging is an easy first step for many of us. Grabbing 5 or 10 minutes of online time vs. finding the funds to attend a conference makes it easier for me to ‘get published’.

The only reason I can start attending more conferences? Our children have grown up and my husband and I have more time and money to spend on our own professional development.

By: joshua m. neff

joshua m. neff — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 03:38:27 +0000

Roy, as the son of a feminist, the husband of a feminist and the father of a little girl who will–assuming my wife and I do our job right–grow up to be a feminist, I have to say: right on! Feminism isn’t a “women’s issue,” it’s an “everybody’s issue.” I’m no kind of man if a woman isn’t treated as my equal.

I want to say much much more, but the words elude me at the moment. I think everyone here (and elsewhere–Dorothea, I particularly like your most recent post about this) has said what I want to say. Just know that if women lead the way, I’m gonna walk right behind you as you do. And then I’ll catch up and walk with you, side by side.

By: kgs

kgs — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 00:16:00 +0000

I hear you, Filipino Librarian. Besides, look what we elected when two men ran for ALA president…

Roy, you are so right. But sisters still do have to do it for themselves and not wait for men. If we don’t set the example, how do we expect the men to follow? I helped organize a LITA program for Annual, and two out of three presenters were male. Yes, the emcee was female (and both women really ran with that program), but still! I need to eat my own dog food.

This is a situation where all around we need more effort. Women need to try a little harder to participate. People organizing events–male or female or anything else–need to be more aware of who they’re including and more sensitive to women’s issues such as childcare (and yes, it’s a men’s issue too, but women still carry the bulk of home caregiving). The work goes on, the cause endures…

Oh, and Library Web Chic has a super post on gender and biblio-IT issues.