Ah, so I am a bit delusional. I really need to cut back on these bath
salts....(but at least I'm not ALA delusional...$90 for a PDF of librarian
salary statistics...really? )

Thinking about this, I guess things have changed quite a bit and I hadn't
realized it...at my first 3 library/archive jobs as a student, I was the
only man in the departments I was working in. But recently, it seems women
are making up more of the library staff the are a) retiring, b) being laid
off or forced out, or c) being put into marginalized middle management
positions (which usually leads to scenario b ) . I don't think this is some
sort of evil plan that is being hatch in some boardroom somewhere...but it
does seem to be happening, right?

But, this leads into another trend I've noticed... recent MLIS graduates
are constantly lamenting the lack of jobs...meanwhile this list is flooded
with jobs. It's a really odd disconnect.  MLIS programs probably have a
good mix of genders (or has that changed too?), so maybe being more active
with current MLIS students will not only get more women in code4lib but
also get more women working in the newer technology departments?




On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ALA does salary surveys every year. This is from the ALA-APA toolkit [1]:
>
> "Pay inequity also exists within librarianship. The Association of
> Research Libraries, in its Annual Salary Survey
> 2005-6, reported that the average salary for male academic librarians in
> member libraries was $63,984, while
> the average for female academic librarians was $61,083.5
>
> Library Journal reported that new library school graduates finally crossed
> the $40,000 mark as an average salary,
> but the gender split had women below that point with $39,587 and men at
> $42,143."
>
> And there's more if you go through the literature.
>
> kc
>
> [1] http://ala-apa.org/improving-**salariesstatus/resources/ala-**
> apa-librarian-and-library-**worker-salary-surveys/<http://ala-apa.org/improving-salariesstatus/resources/ala-apa-librarian-and-library-worker-salary-surveys/>
>
>
> On 11/29/12 1:19 PM, Chris Fitzpatrick wrote:
>
>> Hm. This all has been a long and really interesting conversation...but I
>> gotta ask if  men really outweigh women in the higher paying library jobs
>> as much as they do in banks and K-12? I guess it depends on the definition
>> of "tech" vs. "non-tech" jobs in the library setting, which I'll leave to
>> that other email tread...but since I started working in libraries, 3 of my
>> last 5 managers (hi, Bess!) were women. I always thought one of the best
>> things about working at libraries was that there are way more women
>> working
>> in higher positions than there are in most private for-profit companies.
>>   And I'd be willing to bet my life savings that libraries have
>> a significantly higher percentage of women executives than Fourtune 500
>> companies. But maybe I'm delusional about this? I don't have any figures
>> or
>> anything...
>>
>> What I have noticed is that academic libraries have been trying harder to
>> emulate the Valley and the general tech field. Not only is "Thinking Like
>> A
>> Startup" a mantra, but libraries are flocking to flashier cutting edge
>> technologies. This is probably not a bad thing, but communities like
>> Rails,
>> Drupal, Django, Hadoop, and Node are all overloaded with particular
>> chromosome. So maybe a side-effect is that we're now emulating some of
>> their bad habits along with the good ones?
>>
>> Another thing that Karen Coyle's comments about "coders" vs. "helpers"
>> made
>> me think of is that academic libraries tend to be reorganizing their
>>   departments in kinda interesting ways. There now seems to be things like
>> "Metadata" or "Systems" groups that are distinct from "Digital Repository"
>> or "Applications" groups. Catalogers and the people who work on the ILS
>> are
>> often completely segregated from the people who work on the new flashy
>> grant-funded projects. The former, it kinda seems to me, tends to have
>> more
>> women members while the latter is often lacking. Code4Lib draws mostly
>> from
>> people working in these new-ish groups, which the others get sent to
>> things
>> like ALA...maybe we can significantly improve our ratio by trying to
>> involve and interact more with our colleagues sitting on the other side of
>> the cubical partition? Although the last time I did that I learned the
>> hard
>> way why turning off the Zebra index is a bad idea, so maybe on second
>> thought it's better if we don't get in each other's hair....
>>
>> best,fitz.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 9:10 PM, Bess Sadler <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  The challenges around getting women into male-dominated professions is a
>>> little different from the challenges of getting men into women-dominated
>>> professions. For one thing, professions that are female-dominated are
>>> notoriously low-paying and low-status (think K-12 teachers, nursing,
>>> social
>>> workers, etc). These professions do have major recruiting problems,
>>> largely
>>> because they are low-paying, often considered to be undesirable, and they
>>> have high levels of stress burnout. When men choose to enter these
>>> fields,
>>> they often are promoted more quickly and paid more than women. There are
>>> many professions where this is true. Women outnumber men as K-12
>>> teachers,
>>> but men outnumber women as K-12 principals and school superintendents.
>>> Women make up the majority of bank tellers, but men make up the majority
>>> of
>>> bank managers. Women make up the majority of librarians, but men make up
>>> the majority of the higher-paying technology jobs in libraries. Sensing a
>>> pattern yet? THAT is what we a!
>>>   re trying to disrupt.
>>>
>>> Don't get me wrong, getting more men into nursing is a good thing too!
>>> The
>>> fact that men are less likely to put up with low wages, bad working
>>> conditions, or disrespectful colleagues can work in everyone's favor, and
>>> the field of nursing in particular has faced such problems with
>>> recruiting
>>> that they are trying to undergo a major cultural shift. Male nurses have
>>> been a part of that. Obviously I am not a nurse, but I do have a close
>>> relative who authored a study on this subject for a nursing school, so I
>>> have heard a bit about it.
>>>
>>> I highly recommend the book "Women Don't Ask" (
>>> http://www.womendontask.com),
>>> which is a great book for anyone who wants to know more about effective
>>> negotiating. (Read it before your next salary negotiation!) The book
>>> discusses why men tend to ask for better treatment, better salaries, more
>>> opportunities, etc, while women more often accept whatever they are
>>> given.
>>> This is learned behavior that we can learn to change, though. I think a
>>> place like code4lib, where there is so much opportunity to speak up or
>>> spark initiatives without any hierarchy or bureaucracy getting in the
>>> way,
>>> can be a fertile ground for women who want to develop their negotiation
>>> and
>>> leadership skills, as well as their technical capacity. My entire career
>>> has been shaped around stuff I learned in code4lib, and only some of it
>>> was
>>> about code.
>>>
>>> Bess
>>>
>>> On Nov 27, 2012, at 7:56 AM, "Huwig,Steve" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm just the peanut gallery (having never attended Code4Lib) but it
>>>
>>>> seems to me that a useful analogue to programming/tech conferences --
>>>> which Code4Lib surely is -- would be conferences aimed at professional
>>>> nurses.
>>>>
>>>> Do those conference organizers take measures to increase the number of
>>>> male attendees? If so, what do they do?
>>>>
>>>> Just throwing ideas out there,
>>>> Steve Huwig
>>>>
>>>
> --
> Karen Coyle
> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet
>