Assignment 9: Ethnography

Research Design

In her article “The Opt-Out Revolution”, Lisa Belkin presented a troubling issue. Could it be that so many professional women really are dissatisfied by their jobs? So much so that they are using becoming pregnant as a handy excuse to ‘opt out’ of their career paths? Or is it just that their workplaces refuse to give them the benefits (such as more paid time off or the option to work part time) that they need to raise a child and continue working at the same time? Either way, this seems to suggest less than ideal working conditions for women.
With this concern in mind, I became interested in working conditions for women in academic settings. I was interested in this because my mother is a member of the library faculty here at the University of Oklahoma, and because I expect to remain involved with universities for some time (at least until I obtain a graduate degree, and possibly even as a university faculty member myself).

Methodology

I decided that I would interview my mother, who is the head of Access Services, about her experiences with gender and work, and that I would visit her department for the observation portion of my research. I attempted to investigate possible sources of frustration for women; I was particularly interested in whether there was a difference in the ratio of males to females in entry-level positions versus upper management positions, and whether very many of the women were currently balancing child rearing and work.


Interview Questions

1. Can you recall any specific incidents in the course of your career when you felt that your gender directly affected the way you were treated at work? Do you feel like your gender has ever held you back in any way?

Since librarianship is a female-majority field, I don't think I've really been held back by my gender, for the most part. I do think the last promotion I interviewed for went to a man because of two factors: the dean felt more comfortable with a man, and also wanted to bring in an outsider rather than promote from within. So I may have run into a bit of a glass ceiling now; upper management positions in academic libraries have proportionally far more males than the field as a whole. And academic librarianship tends to have the highest proportion of males than the rest of the field, except possibly special librarianship.

2. What is the approximate ratio of males to females of the student employees in your department? Of your coworkers? Of your boss and the people on his level whom you frequently associate with?

For student employees, I don't have figures, but I think it's about half and half, except for the student security guards, who tend more often to be male (but not always). For coworkers—if you're talking about the faculty and staff who work for me, about 30% male. And in people at associate dean level and higher -- 60% male right now. Was 40% male until Don came in. Of all the librarians in the system, I'd say maybe 25% male. When I go to meetings of the Oklahoma Library Association board, it's more like 10% male

3. Have you ever worked with anyone who quit her job after having a baby?

Well, me for one. Can't really think of anyone else, but I think it was more common 20 years ago than now.

4. What was your experience with work when you had me?

I worked two jobs up to about the seventh month, then quit the full-time job when it started getting too much for me. I would have preferred dropping the part-time job and cutting back hours at the full-time job, but they weren't willing to do that; they wanted full-time up till childbirth or nothing. I was given 6 weeks off the part-time job (no pay), but it wasn't enough—our child-care arrangements fell through at the last minute, and there wasn't time to find anything else, nor was it really worth it for the amount I was making. So I just did substitute work in several libraries till you were about 3 years old, when I went back part-time.

5. How many of the women you work with have successfully balanced having a baby with continuing their careers?

Molly's one example; had her babies in grad school while working as staff. Karen Rupp-Serrano planned very carefully and had her son during her sabbatical. I don't think any of the other female librarians have school-age kids; most of them are around your age. (And come to think of it, most of them are married to male faculty members, which provides a lot more flexibility in child-care arrangements!) In one public library where I worked, I remember one librarian who adopted two kids and managed to keep working. Barbara [in my mother’s department], too—adopted her granddaughter when she was a baby and kept working full-time.

Field Notes

The student employees I was able to observe at the reference desk did, as predicted, seem to be about 50% male and 50% female. I observed several of the women who were in charge of different parts of the department, while the only male boss I observed was the head of the security guards (who had his office in the same area but was not directly in charge of the students at the reference desk). I also observed several students with book carts going to different parts of the library, and they also seemed to be about evenly split by gender. All the workers seemed to be treated equally. I noticed that, when there was one woman and one man at the desk, patrons might be more likely go to the one of their gender, but this was not always the case.

Write Up

My research led me to feel that there is most likely something of a glass ceiling in academic libraries. Women seem to be on equal footing at the entry level positions and even up to the level of department heads, and in fact it is a largely female-dominated profession—so it is strange that the ratio of men to women seems to increase in higher levels of managements, and that the library dean has been male for so many years. However, my mother did not report any negative recent stories of women at academic libraries trying to balance a child and work, so there may have been improvement in this area—though I feel that more research could definitely be done on this. I’d be particularly interested in what the younger librarians who are ‘around my age’ are planning to do in terms of having children.

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Readings

My overall impression of this week’s readings was that women in America are often ignorant of the situations of women in other, often less privileged parts of the world. We are blissfully unaware of exactly what went in to our nice pairs of Nike shoes, our designer jeans—and perhaps we chose to remain that way. To truly consider that sacrifice would challenge our world views and the way we live our lives. Likewise, we continue to accept the “neatly packaged” image of the veiled, hopelessly downtrodden Arab woman, when in fact this not really an accurate representation. A better understanding of the lives of women all around the world is probably the first step to achieving the goals described in the Kumar/Ryan article.

Assignment 8: Belkin

In Belkin’s essay “The Opt-Out Revolution”, she argues that many professional women are using childbirth as an easy way of ‘opting out’ of jobs which fail to satisfy them. She insinuates that women—and she generalizes her findings to all women from her relatively small sample of highly educated, wealthy women—are quitting their jobs after having children because they simply find that their families are more important to them than their careers, and many have criticized her for this. A major criticism is that she may overemphasize the pull of family while underemphasizing the ‘push’ of work—the unwillingness at women’s workplaces to consider the added burden of a child and offer assistance such as granting new mothers more paid leave time and flexible hours.

My experience growing up was perhaps opposite of the norm; my mom worked full-time while my dad stayed at home for much of my childhood. Unfortunately, I was not really able to see if he had more or less trouble than a woman might in returning to the workforce after such a long hiatus, since he chose to start his own business. As for my mother, though, I’ve always had a great deal of respect for her as a career woman and never really felt like I didn’t have enough time with her or that she was choosing her career over me. I feel she has set a great example for me—even though I know I can’t necessarily expect to find as easy a solution to the dilemma of child care versus career as she did.

Assignment 7: Movie Review

On the surface, Coraline is a great coming-of-age film for young girls. Coraline herself is wonderfully tomboyish—she’s independent, adventure-seeking and not afraid to get dirty. There are, however, some details in the film that aren’t so positive.

The basic storyline goes that Coraline, who is dissatisfied with her inattentive parents, is at first delighted to discover an alternate world where her parents lavish her with gifts and constant attention. As the story progresses, this ‘prefect’ world becomes more and more sinister, and it is eventually revealed that her ‘other mother’ is trying to trap Coraline there forever. Now, while it’s understandable that Coraline would want a more attentive mother, her other mother—her ideal mother—looks disturbingly close to a 50’s housewife. The real-life mother is preoccupied by her job, doesn’t cook, and doesn’t wear make-up or dress up around the house; the other mother does all these things, and doesn’t appear to have any kind of job.

This is perhaps a forgivable use of stereotypes, since in the end Coraline realizes she likes her real mother better. More disturbing is the issue of Wybie, the young neighbor boy who befriends Coraline. Wybie was added for the film; in the book on which the film is based, there were no leading male characters. However, he is not a dominating male. In fact, the other mother magically silences the other Wybie, and Coraline initially thinks this is awesome. While at first this seems to be turning feminist issues on their head, I can’t help but notice that it’s happening to a black boy. Without his voice, Wybie essentially becomes a plaything and a servant; while it is kind of interesting that this is happening to a boy, I think it would still have been intensely creepy even without the race issue. I also noticed that although he was shown several times, Wybie did not actually speak in the official web or theatrical trailer.

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Both chapter 6 of The F Word and chapter 9 of Feminism is for Everybody conclude that the need for more support for mothers trying to balance careers and childcare is perhaps one of the most important issues of third-wave feminism. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any truly good solution to the issues mothers face if the world stays the way it is now. From my personal experience, in the families of two of my best friends in high school, one mother worked part-time and another worked from home. Another mother I know stayed at home as a full-time mom for over ten years before returning to the workforce. At the very least, this country needs to provide working mothers with better child-care options and more flexible hours, not to mention equal pay; I was already aware of the wage gap between women and men, but I was shocked to learn how much larger the gap is between mothers and non-mothers. Single mothers are the ones who need money the most, so why are they earning the least? The necessary changes will probably not come about unless women become more involved in the political process, from voting to running for office.

Assignment 6: Advertisement

This ad clearly represents all the roles a woman is supposed to fill. It shows that in one day a woman is expected to do the laundry, go shopping, take care of the kids, stay physically fit, and hold a job. A woman really needs an army to get all this done—too bad she’s ‘just one person’. While it’s nice that this ad acknowledges the problem, the fact that beef—and beef recipes—are somehow the solution seems kind of suspicious to me. Furthermore, the toy ‘solders’ theme seems emphasize the mother role, and most of the images show the woman in housekeeper/mother roles.

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In theory, anyway, I’d like to have children someday. I’ve just always been vague on the subject of when exactly I was going to fit them in, and this week’s chapters from the F Word make me despair of ever finding a truly ‘right’ time. Bad logic and hypocrisy abound: daycare is ridiculously expensive, but women won’t get paid while they’re taking time off to recover from giving birth; if a woman takes time off after having a child, she’ll get paid less when she returns to the workforce even though she now has an additional mouth to feed; between careers and household chores, women work harder than men for less pay.

As a lesbian, maybe—the theory would go—I’ll at least have a partner who’s more willing to share equally in the household chores. But bell hooks speaks the truth when she says that partners in same-sex couples have just as many issues with equality as heterosexual couples do. I found the idea that a lesbian is somehow less likely to feel like she needs someone outside herself “to legitimate and validate her existence” to be kind of ridiculous, in the midst of a chapter whose whole point is that lesbians are, in fact, people too.