Research Column | Brooke Downey
Introduction
In this series of the Research Column, I will examine the links between museum labour, capitalism, and collective action. I want to first acknowledge the work of Morse et al (2018), who found that there: “has been to the relative neglect of museum work itself [in Museum Studies], both how it is organized and the organizational settings in which it takes place” (p.112). This idea of examining the museum as an organization serves as inspiration behind this column.
For this first edition, I am looking at gendered divisions of labour, with a particular emphasis on the gendered aspects of museum work.
Background
When I tell people I’m getting my Master’s in Museum Studies, it is a moment of realization for some that museums do, in fact, employ people. Museums may cultivate this labour-less image, wanting their visitors to only see art and objects, keeping the curtain drawn on the work behind the scenes. There is also the reality that much of the work, such as conservation, happens outside public view. For the public, museum work is a bit like an iceberg: most of what happens is below the surface where they cannot see it.
This perception favours museums and employers by rendering our labour invisible. The truth, that many museum workers struggle with precarious contracts and unlivable wages, remains conveniently hidden. As museum workers who are seeking change, we need to open that curtain and critically examine the ways labour is performed in museums.
But even if the public knew, would they care?
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| What we know of museum work is just the tip of the iceberg | Photo by Matt Hardy from Pexels |
Gendered Labour in Museums
In Victoria Bromley’s overview of Marxist feminism, she defines the sexual division of labour as the split between “good” and “bad” jobs, bad jobs being “those which women were expected to fill, were poorly paid, less valuable, and assume to be unskilled” (2012, p.72). This type of labour is often associated with work done in the home. Women are viewed as “natural” caretakers and thus more “suitable” for caring work, like nursing or education.
In museums, a sexual division of labour can be seen in the roles requiring “hard” or “soft” skills. nikhil trivedi & Aletheia Wittman find that museums define hard skills as those needed in technical roles (e.g. exhibit construction), while soft skills are found in areas like museum education. Feminine-presenting employees are not only found in higher proportion in soft-skilled museum jobs, but they are also required to perform feminized labour even within hard skill dominant roles.
While it isn’t within the scope of this article to go over every reason why the gender binary is bad, this sexual division of labour does have serious consequences for women, femme, and gender non-conforming museum staff. Elke Krasny and Lara Perry highlight how in museums “intellectual labour (masculine) is highly valued and rewarded, while social labour (feminine) less so” (p.137). This results in roles that typically go to feminine folks as being lower paid, more precarious, and less valued.
By looking closely at how labour is performed in museums and who is performing certain types of labour, we can begin to see that museums perpetuate gendered divisions of labour which results in the devaluing of feminized work and staff.
In Victoria Bromley’s overview of Marxist feminism, she defines the sexual division of labour as the split between “good” and “bad” jobs, bad jobs being “those which women were expected to fill, were poorly paid, less valuable, and assume to be unskilled” (2012, p.72). This type of labour is often associated with work done in the home. Women are viewed as “natural” caretakers and thus more “suitable” for caring work, like nursing or education.
In museums, a sexual division of labour can be seen in the roles requiring “hard” or “soft” skills. nikhil trivedi & Aletheia Wittman find that museums define hard skills as those needed in technical roles (e.g. exhibit construction), while soft skills are found in areas like museum education. Feminine-presenting employees are not only found in higher proportion in soft-skilled museum jobs, but they are also required to perform feminized labour even within hard skill dominant roles.
While it isn’t within the scope of this article to go over every reason why the gender binary is bad, this sexual division of labour does have serious consequences for women, femme, and gender non-conforming museum staff. Elke Krasny and Lara Perry highlight how in museums “intellectual labour (masculine) is highly valued and rewarded, while social labour (feminine) less so” (p.137). This results in roles that typically go to feminine folks as being lower paid, more precarious, and less valued.
By looking closely at how labour is performed in museums and who is performing certain types of labour, we can begin to see that museums perpetuate gendered divisions of labour which results in the devaluing of feminized work and staff.
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| Education is one example of gendered labour | Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels |
So what?
I hear from many of my Museum Studies colleagues about how much they love museums. I’m guilty of this myself — who wouldn’t want a job that they really love?
Yet loving work can obscure the ways that work is exploitative. In 2016, in a conversation between Danielle Child, Helena Reckitt, and Jenny Richards, an art historian, a curator, and an artist, respectively, Richards warns that rendering labour as love “is a key component to establishing it is a type of activity that escapes categorization as work,” unfortunately allowing society to “undervalue its character” (p. 150). We love working in museums. Should that come at the expense of ignoring capitalism, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression?
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