Archivists, gender issues and IT

[Martin Devereux]

This discussion follows on from a brief twittering between Alexandra Eveleigh, Luud de Brouwer and myself regarding the sizeable UK female membership of Archives 2.0 compared to UK male membership.

It's good to see many UK archivists signing up but is the bias in numbers of female participants indicative of deeper issues in the profession in the UK. Anecdotally, the ratio of male to female applicants in recent positions available in my organisation suggests that archives is attracting far more women than men. Is this truly the case? If so, why and how might it affect the profession in the future?

Alexandra also made the point that there's a larger debate in the IT sector regarding the lack of women being attracted to work there. Can the slow take up of technology in archives be related to the amount of women working in the sector? (I can't believe I've just suggested that, I think I'm going to be lynched)

[Luud de Brouwer]

You are a brave man Martin! :-)

We have had the same situation here in our archives. Our last application request attracted a lot more woman than men, and most of the men it attracted were a lot older too. This was a position at our reference desk, maybe that has to do something with it.

We chose a woman who is fortunately capable and interested in IT, computers and the internet. But then again, that is something we explicity ask for in the application text. That can do the trick too of course. :-)

Then again, maybe women are more (easily) interested in social networks, because they like to interact (I dare not use another word here or I die with you Martin...) more than men?

[Christian van der Ven]

/me had wished he could stay away from discussions such as this one... (sigh)

Well, here's another man's reply:

Personally I wonder whether we actually do take up technology that slow, at all levels, that is. And I really wonder whether this has anything to do with the amount of women working at archives. For as much as my archives is concerned, most women work in the frontoffice (customer services, reference and such), most men in the backoffice (acquisition, preservation and such).

I think our 'burden' is a profession in which core values are/were 'keeping', 'controlling', 'preserving' etcetera. Those values do not work well together with, for example, Web 2.0's flexibility, user generated content, opening the archives and other 'scary stuff'.

Then again, think about this: if women would be the reason for our archives to take up of technology slow, then please explain why especially the (UK) women join this community, and not the men? Put in another way: where are all the men, who seem to be so happy about technology huh??

/me just trying to balance this discussion a bit... ;-)

[Alexandra Eveleigh]

Before Martin and Luud do get lynched, I think I should point out that it was me (ie a female!) who suggested a potential link between gender and what I perceive as a slowish take-up of new technologies in archives. To their credit, they both immediately dismissed the idea as 'nonsense'.

There are, as Christian points out, many other archivist 'attributes' which might contribute to a reluctance to engage with Web2.0. But I am not quite convinced that the gender issue is as ridiculous as it first appears: the fact remains that the IT profession is dominated by men, archives (at least in the UK) by women.

I would not for a minute want to suggest that women are incapable of engaging with technical subjects, that is clearly rubbish and there is plenty of evidence, including in the archives field, to refute it. Nor do we want to get into some kind of inherent male/female characteristics debate (well, I don't, anyway). But, just as there are determined efforts being made to attract more women into science and technology subjects and professions, I do think there is room for a - constructive and serious - debate about whether we should give some thought as to how to rebalance the gender ratio within the archives profession.

[Martin Devereux]

Well Luud, Christian and Alexandra, I like your points. I sense a reluctance from many archivists to engage with some of the technologies that are now at our disposal and I'm keen to explore why that is. Luud may be right in his assertion that women are more inclined to interact but I think that is distracting to the real issues of this discussion. Inevitably traits in gender may come into this discussion but the reason why I posted the question is really because it chimes with what we seem to be witnessing in the workplace; a lack of interest in archives as a career for men.

We have assistant posts currently available and, from what I've been told only one male applicant has applied. In the past year or two we have employed a number of archive assistants and these have been evenly split male to female. These are now making their way onto the various archive courses. I get the sense, however, that our organisation has been fairly singular in this and that the courses are seeing a very low number of male applicants.

My curatorial colleagues are seeing a similar problem too - recent job interviews for a curatorial post saw no male applicants. So the issue crosses the domain of museums, archives and probably libraries too.

Women have been breaking down the barriers to the senior posts for quite a number of years now and it's wholly appropriate for this to happen. But should we be concerned that our profession seems to be largely ignored by men as a viable and fulfilling career? If so, what should we do about it?

[Yvette Hoitink]

In the Netherlands, both archives and ICT have traditionally been male-dominated professions. There have been more female archivists in recent years, although I cannot say if they've outnumbered men yet. We have many women working in other jobs in our archive, like in marketing, education, presentation, editing and as managers (both line managers and project managers). But the ICT-department has been all-male since I left for another function...

I don't know if I agree with you that archives have been slow to take up technology. Archives do tend to do things thoroughly, so may be that is part of the reason why we are not always at the fronteer. We also have a responsibility to ensure future access, so I guess it makes sense to want to use proven technology.

[Grietje Keller]

On the connection between gender and technology/IT: something is only called 'technical' when men are involved. As soon as women are coming in, it isn't called technology anymore. A drill machine is technical, a sewing machine is not.

Then there is the relation between a profession and gender. There is the 'law of Sullerot', described by the french sociologist Evelyne Sullerot: when a profession is dominated by males, it does have a higher status. But when more women come in into this profession, the status of the profession drops down.

So, according to the law of Sullerot, if more women are dominating the archives professions, it means that working in an archive has a low status :-(

The 'bad' relationship between IT and women, has not always been there. IT maybe dominated at the moment by men, in the 50's in The Netherlands (and in the 40's in the UK and US) women were involved in early computing. The firsts computers were programmed by women. Women were back then on the forefront of computer - technology.

So I can not agree on several points in the connection of slow-adaptation of IT technologies in archives to the domination of women in archives. I think it is much more usefull to look at the professions core values, as Christian did, which can explain an eventual slow adaption.

I work at the Dutch women's archives: Aletta, Institute of Women's History (we changed our name, before Aug 11th 2009 our name was International Information Centre and Archives of the Women's Movement IIAV). Now two men work at Aletta, but before that all the staff was female (technical females and non-technical females :-)

I do agree with Alexandra: a balance of the gender-ratio is important, in any workplace, as is a balance in other ways: ethnicity, sexual diversity, age etc.

[Victoria Oxberry]

Some statistics on the new professionals: I finished my masters last year and, if I've remembered everyone, there were 10 women and 7 men full time. Out of that, 6 women took the digital strand for the second semester, and only 2 men.

[Martin Devereux]

Grietje, I think your point about Sullerot's Law to be particularly apt. I think professions in the heritage domain are seen as relatively low-status: jobs you do for love of it, rather than the cash. Archives, however, transcend the heritage pigeonhole - a good number of us work for large corporations, for governments and other types of institutions.

Victoria, it's good that there's not as much difference in the numbers of males to females taking the courses - I hope your experience is reflected across all the courses.

I think also part of what we should be discussing is what Alexandra and Grietje have pointed too - a much more balanced spread of ethnicity, age and sex. Is the first degree, followed by post graduate diploma/masters route (as it is in the UK) a limiting factor to attracting a more diverse community of archivists? I very much believe it is and I was really interested in the apprenticeship (I forget the official name of the programme) scheme that Birmingham Archives was able to run with its Connecting Histories project a few years ago.

[Erin O'Neill]

I'm not convinced that the issue is entirely to do with gender. I think there are other factors to do with the attitude to technology.

We shouldn't forget that the progress of technology has been extremely fast in recent years, with new developments being frequent enough that keeping up with new developments can be daunting. I remember how excited we were in my workplace when we got our first PC connected to the internet, which was shared between the three of us in the office. The year? 1994 - only fifteen years ago! Since then we've had the steamroller-like progress of the web into people's everyday lives, email becoming a standard method of communication, and an expectation that information will be available remotely. None of these things were available when I did my undergraduate degree in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

My point is that even those of us in the Archives profession who are still relatively young in career terms (of either gender), can remember a time when technology was not so prominent, and sometimes struggle to keep up with new developments that seem to happen at breakneck speed. I suspect that as the young women who are qualifying now as Archivists rise in the ranks - women who can't remember at time when computers weren't an essential item in homes and schools - the perceived issue of not being as technologically savvy will pass, as they will have grown up with it and be accustomed to embracing the new developments.

Another issue that is possibly more pertinent to those of us who work in Archives that are part of larger companies, is that in cases where the Archives are only a small part of an organisation, and therefore not its core business, there is often a lack of funding available for new developments. We might want to get our catalogue online, or be able to digitise certain collections, but we just aren't able to get the resources to do so. So it may not always be an unwillingness to embrace new technological developments that is holding people back, but a lack of funds.

So I don't think the problem is entirely due to gender. There are other factors in play that may be relevant to the profession as a whole, and not just to the type of people who do Archives work.

[Frida Sandgren]

I believe that one of the reasons for the change in the type of person (sex, age, etc) who decides to become an archivist is the way we market ourselves and our profession. Archives used to be seen as something secret and all archivists as odd antisocial men dressed in beige. If you didn’t have personal knowledge about the profession it didn´t seem very alluring.

Because of the new technologies and the opportunities it gives us to reach the public the view on archives and archivist has changed. Now we are more seen as heritage institutions, which is the result of archives marketing that side of the profession. More people that are interested in working with the heritage are now aware of archives and are interested in working in one.

If we want to attract people with technical knowledge to the profession I believe that we have to promote that side of our work as well…..Please don´t ask me how.