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| http://www.raincityhousing.org/whatsnew/international-womens-day-is-good-news/ |
Today is International Women’s Day! So to celebrate at Musings we thought it was appropriate to give a shout out to the ladies of the museum world. Starting today, all next week we are going to have posts related to women in our field. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited. I don’t have a regular column on the blog, but I wanted to write the introductory post for International Women’s Day because it is a cause dear to my heart. I am a human after all.
Before I sat down to write this post, I took a gander at the International Woman’s Day website. According to their “About” page, IWD started as early as 1908, and was mostly used to support women’s right to vote and work. Since the turn of the century, women have seen a great increase in opportunities and a significant change in attitudes towards their political, economic, and social success. However despite all the successes, IWD reminds us that “the unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education… is worse than that of men.”
Before I sat down to write this post, I took a gander at the International Woman’s Day website. According to their “About” page, IWD started as early as 1908, and was mostly used to support women’s right to vote and work. Since the turn of the century, women have seen a great increase in opportunities and a significant change in attitudes towards their political, economic, and social success. However despite all the successes, IWD reminds us that “the unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education… is worse than that of men.”
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| http://nlg-steampunk.blogspot.ca/2011/07/suffragettes-votes-for-women.html#.UxneqeddV7E |
There are so many things we could talk about in regards to women’s rights, but for the sake of this post (so it doesn’t go on TOO long) I’m going to try to stick to women in the workforce, particularly the museum workforce.
Now, as our program is OVERWHELMINGLY female, it can be easy to get caught up in our MMSt bubble and feel like we are overrepresented. What about in the real world? Are ladies getting the chances they deserve museums? Or does this female-heavy population trend continue? I did a very quick (read: informal) search to see who held the highest positions in some well-known museums. Here’s the breakdown:
Royal Ontario Museum
CEO/Director: Janet Carding (Lady)
National Gallery of Canada
Director: Marc Mayer (Gentleman)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Director/CEO: Thomas P. Campbell (Gentleman)
The Louvre
Director/President: Jean-Luc Martinez (Gentleman)
Canadian War Museum
Director General: James Whitham (Gentleman)
Royal British Columbia Museum
Director/CEO: Jack Lohman (Gentleman)
Ontario Science Centre
CEO: Lesley Lewis (Lady)
So, as you can see, of these (very) random museums, only two has a female Director or CEO. Not the best. But, if you keep digging you’ll see that some Executive Offices did have females, they just didn’t occupy the top spot. The National Gallery of Canada is pretty evenly split with half of the top executive jobs occupied by women, and at the Ontario Science Centre women represented 5 out of 7 executive positions. It was the ROM which disappointed me, while yes, Janet Carding is the Director/CEO, she was the sole female representative in their executive.
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| Janet Carding, CEO http://www.museum-id.com/idea-detail.asp?id=202 |
These are kind of scary numbers for me, so I’m going to caveat them. First, I did this little Google search in about 20 minutes, and it is in NO WAY comprehensive. It is an interesting jumping off point though, maybe for a deeper study. Secondly, I read this blog post by the always wonderful Nina Simon. She takes the opposite view, citing the disparity we’ve noticed in our own classrooms: about 60-80% of employees in history and art museums are female, with the statistic dropping down to about 50% in science museums. According to Nina, only 5% of applicants for museum jobs are men. She brings up some interesting points about having a very heavily white/female bias in museums nowadays, and how problematic that can be. So then, balance this information with the fact that my brief poll only netted 2 female directors, and where does that leave us? On a ship manned by women but captained by a male.
Essentially, I believe what we’re looking at is the trend expressed on the IWD website: women are becoming more and more equal in the workforce (in the case of museums we are the majority), but are still underrepresented in places and positions of power. Unfortunately, this directly correlates to compensation. As we see men in higher positions, we also see them getting paid more. I don’t really have the time (well, space, mostly space) to unpack the inequality where wages are concerned, but it is an issue. Maybe we will tackle this later in the week.
A professor of mine last semester made a reference to “Bearded Curators” disappearing. What she meant was that the days of old, white men running the show were over, and that women were representing more and more. I think to a certain extent that is what we’re witnessing now, but it will be slow to action. I also think the largest institutions (like the ones I listed above) will be the last to follow suit. I know from my own experiences, some smaller museums have 90% female staff, and it is the women who occupy those leadership positions. But are we swinging too far? Is having a female majority leaving us with the same problems as a male majority?
The good news is we are witnessing change, and as incoming female professionals it is likely we ARE the change. I don’t know about you, but "Meaghan Dalby, Director/CEO" would look great on a business card.
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Some closing thoughts (sorry there are a lot of them):
What does this female workforce/male executive pattern mean for us as incoming female museum professionals? Will we strive to occupy the coveted CEO/Director’s office? Is having a female-majority staff problematic? Gents out there, what are YOUR opinions? What solutions (if there are any) do you propose?
