Dear Ulla

Is some kind of "assistance" mentality - held over from the days when women were looked upon as belonging in service roles - still haunting the information profession?  Sometimes, I get a nagging feeling that if I were male, stakeholders would regard my professional contribution differently - am I out to lunch here?

Anonymous

You are touching on a complex topic that could make for a fascinating PhD thesis! Here's my very pragmatic view:  Let's focus on projecting a professional image based on results and value --but let's not overlook the potential impact of borrowing the "uniform" idea from the guys! 

One could speculate that the significant demographic shifts we are now seeing, coupled with the trend for females to outnumber males at secondary education institutions, may impact views of the relative roles of women and men.  But I'll have to believe too many other factors play a role.

While we watch society evolve, we can't go wrong with two basic strategies:

• First, in everything we do and communicate, we must echo the organization's strategic direction --in other words, we focus on the business at hand rather than on ourselves as individuals.
• Second, we are smart about the image we project.  Studies have been made of the influence of attire on the perception others have of an individual's competence - typically concluding that jackets and blazers influence study participants' ratings of people in professional positions. I received a valuable lesson at my first private sector job when a colleague explained why she always donned her jacket to leave her desk:  "You never know who you are going to meet in the hallway." 

What do the gentlemen think?

Ulla de Stricker

Comments

[Juanita Richardson]

As usual, I think Dear Ulla is bang on the money. Some other thoughts:
Do the library and i-schools train us in the "service" mentality - as opposed to being business partners?
Do we enter the profession "for the love of it" and forget about the economic imperative (resulting in accepting lower wages)?
Do we hijack our own interests when we accept volunteer work - which otherwise a paid professional would do - in the interest of "gaining experience"?
Thoughts?

[Jill Hurst-Wahl]

BTW the term coined for professions that were deemed safe for women is "velvet ghetto." I think these ghettos appeared after the men returned from WWII. In some cases, the velvet ghettos were professions that had previously been dominated by men. (Elizabeth Lance Toth has done research on this topic.)

Librarianship has been a velvet ghetto for women and others (e.g., gays and lesbians). And being a ghetto also implies that the pay and rewards are not as good. We've tried different ways of changing both the perception and the reality (e.g., title changes, taking on additional responsibilities, etc.), but we still haven't put ourselves on equal footing with doctors, lawyers, and others that go to professional schools (as we do). Hopefully some day someone will figure out the right cure for this situation.

[Custom dissertation]

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