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.