The Status of Women Librarians

Abstract

We know from 1980 census data that there are 136,000 librarians in the United States and that 84.6 percent of them are women.' Membership in the American Library Association (ALA) is over 40,000 and 78.3 percent is female.2 So indeed we have empirical data backing up the widely held notion that librarianship in this century is a woman's profession. But only 100 years ago this was not true: women came into the profession because we were cheap and available. Women's presence in librarianship shot up from 20 percent in 1870 to 75 percent in 1900.3 Justin Windsor said in 1877, In American libraries, we set a high value on women's work. They soften our atmosphere, they lighten our labor, they are equal to our work, and for the money they cost-they are infinitely better than equivalent salaries will produce in the other sex.4 Thus when we look at the status of women in libraries, we find that women predominate but men dominate because of a century of discrimination-a statistical variable that I do not know how to measure. What is the status of women in libraries? Since 1981 I have been the bibliographer for the ALA Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship, which is charged with the collection, analysis, dissemination and coordination of information on the status of women in librarian-