Untitled-8 The Missing Women Library Directors 375 375 The Missing Women Library Directors: Deprivation versus Mentoring Janice J. Kirkland Why is the percentage of women academic library directors much lower than the percentage of women in the profession as a whole? This ar- ticle examines survey responses to conclude that factors blocking the advancement of women library directors include deprivation behavior or antimentoring, which supports a glass ceiling. A second survey finds that mentoring is a central factor in career advancement of many women library directors. Janice J. Kirkland is Women�s Studies Coordinator in the Stiern Library at California State University, Bakersfield; e-mail: jkirkland@csubak.edu. hy are there not more women library directors? Although 75 to 80 percent of American li- brarians are women, they hold far fewer than 75 percent of directorships, especially of large or prestigious libraries. �While the data certainly show some ad- vances for women in librarianship, there re- mains a puzzling persistence of inequity . . . including an underrepresentation at the top.�1 Although the number of women di- rectors in the 4,700 U.S. academic libraries is not known, the improbability that there are 3,760 of them�which would be 80 percent of 4,700�suggests hundreds of missing women library directors.2 Much research has been devoted to the reasons that few women become direc- tors, and many possible causes have been presented; some of them certainly have a core of truth, but none of them explains enough. This article suggests a dual cause: a library version of the notorious glass ceiling for women, kept in place by use of deprivation behavior; and the re- verse phenomenon of a glass escalator supported by acceptance behavior for men. As support for the deprivation theory, a survey found a strong presence of mentoring, the opposite of depriva- tion, in many careers of women who had succeeded in becoming library directors. This research grew very gradually over several years. The original plan was to find reasons for the missing library directors by seeking input from women librarians themselves, asking not only for their opinions on why there are not more women in high library positions, but also whether they had had, or knew of, expe- riences that discourage women from try- ing to rise in administration. The name given to such experiences of discourage- ment was deprivation behavior. The Preliminary Inquiry The first stage was to find out whether some of the author�s colleagues endorsed 376 College & Research Libraries July 1997 FIGURE 1 Types of Deprivation Behavior 1. Responsibility deprivation: Prelimi- naries but not the real work. Chairing only secondary committees. Advisory, but not su- pervisory role; preparation, but not imple- mentation; uncovering the foregone conclu- sion; responsibility without authority. 2. Information deprivation: Cutting off the pipeline. Ignoring the sacred tenet of access to information by selective commu- nication; delayed communication; assign- ment of information sources away from women; not recording the work of women (evidence tends to vanish). 3. Recognition and approval depriva- tion: Praising his article, ignoring her book. The double standard in viewing ac- complishment; men make slipups, women make ERRORS; recycling male librarians, replacing female librarians. 4. Solidarity deprivation: Using women against each other. The irresistible appeal to self-worth in junior women leads them to depreciate female colleagues. The invis- ible ceiling above senior women; using paraprofessional women staff against librar- ians. �very provocative� whereas another de- scribed it as a �novel and fresh approach to the subject� of the missing directors. One respondent stated, �I have lived through most of the deprivations you cite.� Another commented, �I think docu- mentation of this type is badly needed in our field.� Recognizing the same need, another respondent wrote, �Most men and women may not realize that what is happening is discriminatory and will continue to allow these types of things to happen� unless they are made aware. It also was clear from several replies that responsibility for deprivation behav- ior must be attributed to administrators of both sexes and to nonlibrarians in po- sitions of power above library hierar- chies. Most important, many respon- dents suggested that the basic point of deprivation research should be to pro- vide information on how to deal with it positively and productively. Following the preliminary inquiry, the seemingly unrelated subject of pay eq- uity shed some additional light on the question of missing women directors. A number of studies indicated that one rea- son for the lack of widespread agitation for higher librarian salaries could be a lack of a sense of entitlement, which is true of many women in general and must therefore also be true of a profession in which women predominate numerically.3 If it is true that women have a lower sense than men of the opportunities which their abilities, education, and experience entitle them to, it also would be true that fewer women than men feel entitled to seek high administrative positions. There is therefore likely to be an added dimen- sion to deprivation that must be taken Many respondents suggested that the basic point of deprivation research should be to provide information on how to deal with it positively and productively. the idea of deprivation behavior, repre- sented by a list of sample behaviors or techniques used to discourage female ambition (see figure 1). If there was no support for the idea, the author would not proceed further in investigating it. The list was sent to a test group of twenty women librarians, including eleven from libraries of other campuses in the California State University (CSU) system, seven from other states, one edi- tor of a professional journal, and an ALA staff member. All but three of the librar- ians were academic. This was a very in- formal poll with no attempt to choose a representative range of recipients. There was a high rate of return. Six- teen of the twenty replied, and fifteen of them considered the deprivation concept to be worth pursuing. One thought it The Missing Women Library Directors 377 into account. To external deprivation imposed upon ambitious women to pre- vent them from rising in rank, add inter- nal, yet societally imposed, psychologi- cal deprivation preventing some capable women librarians from feeling them- selves entitled to seek directorships. A former head of the ALA Office for Library Personnel Resources, one of the preliminary deprivation inquiry recipi- ents, commented: �Are you addressing the issue of women getting to middle management but then not to the top? Our statistics show that they do fairly well up to department head/branch head posi- tions in terms of women in the profes- sion, but then drop off at top manage- ment jobs.� It is reasonable to hypoth- esize that both internal and external types of deprivation are involved in this drop- ping off, and that externally imposed deprivation probably is not applied most intensively until women librarians reach department head or branch head level and begin to be seen as potential compe- tition with men for higher positions. Survey 1: Fifty Librarians The next step in deprivation research was to compile a short four-question survey and select a sample of fifty women librar- ians to receive it. The list included librar- ians in twenty-eight states and the Dis- trict of Columbia, none of whom had received the preliminary inquiry. The survey explained deprivation behavior and asked for experience with or obser- vation of it. Perhaps because it asked for deprivation incidents from respondents� own careers, and some did not want to share painful experiences despite assur- ances of confidentiality, the rate of return was a low 24 percent. However, those questionnaires that were returned were a trove of useful comments supporting the idea that some women librarians� professional advancement suffers from deprivation. The first question asked if their posi- tions permitted respondents to work up to their full potential (responsibility dep- rivation). Some respondents said they were able to do so at this point in their careers, indicating the possibility that the situation could change. One respondent qualified her reply by saying that she was working up to her potential in some ar- eas, but not in others. Of those who said they were unable to work up to their full potential, one commented that she had never had a supervisor capable of fos- tering staff development. Another said that she had been forced to drop back, not reaching her full potential, and �com- pensate in other parts of my life.� The second question asked if they had experienced or observed deprivation be- havior like that previously described. Most of the respondents had either ex- perienced or observed deprivation that inhibited the professional development of women librarians. They provided ex- amples derived from every deprivation category; a single type of behavior some- times simultaneously affected more than one woman librarian by diminishing their responsibilities and information and by removing or blocking recognition and support. Several responses noted a preference by directors for male subordinates, par- ticularly in supervising positions re- lated to technology, which effectually de- prived females of opportunities to take on new and challenging responsibilities. �The director favors the new people she hires, all males. They receive higher pay than female employees already on staff, are given the more visible assignments and responsibilities, and spend more time just �chatting� with her.� Deprivation is obviously not a simple matter of persons of one sex opposing persons of the other but, rather, of some One commented that she had never had a supervisor capable of fostering staff development. 378 College & Research Libraries July 1997 administrators of both sexes being preju- diced against women. Such prejudices can be active despite the immediate avail- ability of evidence to the contrary, as in the example one respondent reported of bias in favor of males in technology: �For a media position, I was advised to seek a �young man� even though the staff mem- bers then doing the job successfully were women.� In another technology-related example, the least experienced librarian on staff�and the only male�was given responsibility for an automation project. The respondents were keenly aware of a lack of needed support from their ad- ministrators. One respondent reported having a male director who �could be a great mentor but doesn�t want to� and another had a director who saw nothing wrong in belonging to a local all-male club where high-level campus adminis- trators met. The third question asked for the effects on self-image and performance of women who suffered deprivation. Re- spondents reported varied reactions to experiences of deprivation, but anger, the natural human reaction to mistreatment, was rarely mentioned, probably because most women rarely express their anger. Although we seldom admit it, women firmly believe that our rage is fully as dangerous as an atomic bomb. . . . After all, what happens when a woman gets angry? Men avoid or abandon her. Other women pull away because their own unresolved rage is suddenly alerted. She is left alone.4 Instead of anger, more acceptable reac- tions were mentioned. One woman rec- ommended that women leave situations of deprivation and mentioned a col- league whose ideas were stolen and who moved elsewhere to a directorship. In this case, deprivation was a spur to career advancement. However, not everyone was so fortunate. �My self-image is tak- ing a beating,� said one librarian who was about to resign her position without having found a new job. Another respon- dent had the same concern: �We could all use a course on preserving and pro- tecting our self-image.� When there was no corrective action possible, the responses described a range of coping mechanisms, one of which was simply to keep quiet�silence in meet- ings, silence when the administration asked for input or opinions. Some bur- ied themselves in their work (�deep task involvement�) or became punctilious about performance (�many memos on minutiae�). Some saw colleagues absent themselves from the job by frequent sick leave, probably caused by deprivation stress, which is an important area need- ing more investigation. The replies made it clear that depriva- tion seriously affects morale and job per- formance, which in turn negatively af- fect the overall library operation. Uncon- scious gender prejudices not only affect evaluation of female performance, they also affect the performance itself. �Low expectations of achievement frequently become self-fulfilling prophecies. Those who predict inadequate performance tend to signal their assumptions in subtle ways, and this negative feedback leads to anxiety, mistakes and diminished aspi- rations.�5 The central problem, however, is not the current work situation but, rather, the future effects. The women�s belief in themselves is harmed, and they will be less likely or unlikely to apply for higher positions. The fourth and most important ques- tion asked for methods to improve women�s advancement in librarianship, and the responses showed that the sub- ject had been given much thought. Re- plies dealt with mobility, self-confidence, mentoring, and other ideas. Here are some of the comments: �Librarians/women to advance in their careers have to believe in them- selves�and we�re taught not to.� The Missing Women Library Directors 379 �If women wish to advance in the field, they must be willing and able to travel to new areas.� �We need mentors�no one up there will help anyone below!� Several respon- dents called for new evaluations of atti- tudes toward, and treatment of, women librarians. One saw a need to �raise con- sciousness�help people identify depri- vation situations which they don�t even recognize as such . . . and then provide realistic methods of dealing with them.� Another gave specific advice on what a woman librarian needs to learn and un- learn: �Learn image and �power� communi- cations skills so that our arguments and positions can be persuasively presented. Learn how to handle conflict. Develop networks of women administrators and look for one or two female mentors to learn from. �Unlearn� how to be support- ive and cooperative sometimes; that is, learn how to hold your own if the issue is worth fighting for.� One writer, speculating that her direc- tor felt threatened by her activity in state and national organizations, called for time to be donated by the library for pro- fessional development: �How am I sup- posed to get involved, meet people, ad- vance my career when I have to fight with my director for time off to attend meet- ings? That�s what bothers me most.� Oth- ers made similar comments: �Women should be appointed to as many commit- tees as possible, should study and write whenever possible, and be encouraged to do so by time relief and appropriate funds.� The big picture of the profession as a whole was considered by one respon- dent, who, after recommending that women librarians work on their assertiveness and communication skills, went on to say that: Gaining the support of fellow pro- fessionals, mobilizing other women, getting the attention of legislators� all require good speaking and writ- ing. Actively spotlight women who have progressed in responsibility and authority. Seek them out as ad- visors or mentors. When planning programs, engage as many women speakers as possible. When a woman performs poorly, try to help her improve. Especially, praise people when they do well. The results of the first survey show that some women librarians are being deprived�and know they are being de- prived�of time, attention, encourage- ment, support, praise, advice, and other necessities for professional success. In the employment world at large, the collec- tive descriptor for this situation is the term glass ceiling. The ceiling impedes the rise of women to positions of power. Deprivation may be seen as a collection of techniques to establish and maintain the ceiling. Many women have paid their dues, even a premium, for a chance at a top position, only to find a glass ceiling between them and their goal. The glass ceiling is not sim- ply a barrier for an individual, based on the person�s inability to handle a higher-level job. Rather, the glass ceiling applies to women as a group who are kept from ad- vancing higher because they are women.6 However, the career damage of the glass ceiling is not all that women librar- ians have to contend with. In librarianship, there is a reverse phenomenon affecting male librarians called the glass escalator which takes them to the top. An alterna- tive method of describing the same prob- lem is a joke the author first heard in li- brary school. The joke wryly asks why male librarians are like dead fish. The an- swer is, �because they both rise to the top.� Of course, the dead fish syndrome 380 College & Research Libraries July 1997 or glass escalator is present in other fields too, where men are in the minority, in- cluding nursing, social work, and el- ementary school teaching. The recent work of sociologist Christine Williams is helpful in understanding male advancement in these areas. For her book Still a Man�s World, she interviewed ninety- nine persons in librarianship and the other three fields mentioned above. Her comment on one interview shows that even a disinter- ested male may be pushed toward the glass escalator because of gender: A public librarian specializing in children�s collections (a heavily female concentration) described an encounter with this �escalator� in his first job out of library school. . . . His supervisors criticized him for not aiming high enough. �They assumed that because I was a male . . . I wasn�t doing the kind of management-oriented work that they thought I should be doing.� Williams explains: �I do not mean to sug- gest that the men I interviewed all re- sented or resisted the informal tracking they experienced. . . . Some men entered these occupations anticipating that they would ride the �glass escalator.� They planned to move into administration or management as quickly as possible.�7 It is important to identify and under- stand behavior leading to the glass ceil- ing which stops women librarians and to the glass escalator which raises men librarians. Such understanding, if it leads to behavior change, can be the first step in changing the gender ratio of director- ships and bringing it closer to the gen- der ratio among librarians at large. Once all librarians feel that they have a fair and equal chance to advance based upon their abilities and potential, notwithstanding their gender, more women will work to- ward, and apply for, top administrative vacancies.8 Survey 2: 135 Women Directors The second survey was intended to seek career factors that women directors had found most valuable in their advance- ment�factors that would be the reverse of deprivation and the glass ceiling. For this purpose, the author conducted an e- mail inquiry of women directors belong- ing to WALDEN (Women Academic Li- brary Directors Engaged in Networking).9 Because directors are busy people, the �one-minute survey� asked only one ques- tion with eleven possible answers from which to mark the top three (see figure 2). The question was, What are the three career factors most important in your rise to a directorship? Of the 135 members, 61 (45%) re- sponded. As table 1 shows, the five fac- tors most frequently chosen, along with the number of women who chose them, were mobility (34), mentors (25), aca- FIGURE 2 Women Director Career Factors: One-Minute Survey This one-question survey is going only to women academic library directors in the hope that your responses will provide an encouraging ending to an article in process, “The Missing Women Library Directors.” Thank you for participating! Please mark the three (3) most important factors in your career advancement in priority order 1 (top), 2, and 3. Hard work is assumed and is not listed. ____ Academic majors/degrees ____ Family support ____ Mentor(s): women__ men___ both___ ____ Mobility/job change ____ Networking, informal ____ Publication ____ Professional organization service ____ Role model(s) ____ Tenacity/perseverance ____ Technology ____ Other factors or general comments The Missing Women Library Directors 381 ganizations (2), aca- demic majors/de- grees (3), tenacity/ perseverance (6), mobility (7), and mentors (13). Twenty-five direc- tors gave credit to mentors, with thir- teen putting mentors in first place and seven putting them in sec- ond place. Therefore, for twenty of the sixty- one directors, or al- most one-third, men- tors were of prime im- portance to their suc- cess. No other single factor came close to mentors in significance. This result plainly shows the reverse side of the coin from deprivation behavior, which might be described as �antimentoring.� On the one hand are capable women librarians who are discouraged from seeking ad- ministrative positions (deprivation); on the other hand are capable women librar- ians who are actively encouraged (mentoring) to seek administrative posi- tions and who succeed in attaining them. The mentor choice asked those who selected it to specify whether their men- tors were men, women, or both. Table 2 shows the results. Because of the dispro- portionate number of male directors who were available to mentor these women as they rose through the ranks, it is not surprising to find that individual male mentors outnumber female mentors seven to three. What is striking about the results, however, is the number of current directors who had mentors of both sexes. This may imply that librarians who have men and women mentors have an advan- tage in advancement, possibly deriving demic majors/degrees (21), professional organizations (20), and tenacity/perse- verance (19). The three least-often se- lected factors were technology (10), role models (7), and publication (4), which seems surprising in view of the wide- spread pursuit of technology and the continuing stress on publishing in aca- deme. Eleven of the sixty-one directors suggested career factors not on the sur- vey, such as leadership and management skills, internships, political astuteness (savvy), communication, integrity, and �having the right skills at the right time in the right place.� Many added useful comments, some of which are quoted be- low. Several directors noted that all or most of the factors were important, and it was difficult to choose only three. Therefore, some survey responses should be regarded as approximate, but the gap between those most chosen and those least chosen was wide and clear. Because the respondents were asked to rank their answers, the next step was to analyze how many of them gave first place to each of the most-chosen factors. This resulted in a change in interpreting which was the single most important fac- tor. The top five factors, along with the number of those respondents giving them first place, were: professional or- TABLE 1 Responses to the Survey of Women Directors Ranked 1st 2d 3d Unranked Total Academic majors/degrees 3 4 9 5 21 Family support 6 1 5 1 13 Mentor(s) 13 7 0 5 25 Mobility/job change 7 16 5 6 34 Networking, informal 2 5 6 2 15 Publication 0 1 1 2 4 Professional organization 2 5 8 5 20 service Role model(s) 3 1 1 2 7 Tenacity/perseverance 6 5 5 3 19 Technology 2 3 4 1 10 Other factors 4 1 1 1 7 No other single factor came close to mentors in significance. 382 College & Research Libraries July 1997 TABLE 2 Gender of Mentors Female mentors 3 Male mentors 7 Both 13 Gender not given 2 Total 25 to them who expected that they �would not only work but be successful,� and human beings tend to live up to what is expected of them. On the question of mentors, the in- creasing number of women library direc- tors should, in the future, provide an in- creased number of mentors who will in turn increase the number of women li- brary directors. Such increases are al- ready being seen. For example, in 1970, the largest U.S. public university system, the California State University system, had nineteen campuses each with a male library director. Today, the twenty-two CSU campuses have ten women direc- tors (45%). WALDEN, the organization that sent out the survey, has grown from a dozen women directors at its start to a present estimated size of 135. It is easy to see why one respondent wrote that she was unaware that there were any miss- ing women library directors. In reply, it should be asked if any 80 percent male field accepts men in less than 80 percent of its leadership roles. Conclusion Increased awareness of gender bias is needed by all persons concerned in the selection of directors, including not only librarians but also academic administra- tors, teaching faculty, trustees, and others. Bias has become subtle rather than blatant, but it still exists in academe. Indeed, in some places it thrives. That form of gen- der bias which in this article is called dep- rivation behavior must be dug out and de- stroyed wherever it is found in libraries. Every librarian, regardless of gender, must be mentored and actively encouraged to work up to her or his full potential. Only then will the profession be able to find its missing women library directors. different strengths from each, or that the more mentors she has, the better train- ing and more confidence a woman aim- ing at library administration may gain. One respondent said she had �always worked for men, some wonderful ones who saw human beings as opposed to men or women and generously served as mentors.� Another offered testimony to the power of just a few words: �I had one mentor I spoke with only once but he said to me, �Have you ever consid- ered becoming a library administrator? I think you would be a good one.� The truth was, I had never considered it be- fore that moment. Didn�t he do me a good turn?� A respondent with two mentors said they were �an assistant director who challenged me enormously but who al- ways conveyed confidence that I could do what he asked; later, one of the first female ARL directors, who expected a lot from us and made us do our homework.� One director wrote wistfully: �Would have loved a mentor but never had one.� Instead, she had two role models, one of whom was her mother, a working woman who raised her �with the expec- tation that I would not only work but be successful.� This comment helps to ex- plain the success of some of the women directors who did not have mentors. Hopefully, they had someone important Notes 1. Suzanne Hildenbrand, �Still Not Equal: Closing the Library Gender Gap,� Library Journal 122 (Mar. 1, 1997): 44�46. 2. American Library Directory, 1996�97, vol. 1 (New Providence, N.J.: Bowker, 1996), x. The Missing Women Library Directors 383 3. Janice J. Kirkland, �Equity and Entitlement: Internal Barriers to Improving the Pay of Aca- demic Librarians,� College & Research Libraries 52 (July 1991): 375�80. 4. Anne Wilson Schaef, Women�s Reality: An Emerging Female System in a White Male Society (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), 85�86. 5. Deborah L. Rhode, Justice and Gender: Sex Discrimination and the Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Pr., 1989), 171. 6. Ann M. Morrison, R. P. White, E. Van Velsor, and Center for Creative Leadership, Breaking the Glass Ceiling (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992): 13. 7. Christine Williams, Still a Man�s World: Men Who Do Women�s Work (Berkeley: Univ. of Cali- fornia Pr., 1995), 87�89. 8. Particular thanks to the women librarians who responded to the painful and difficult topic of deprivation behavior in the hope that the survey would help other women who are undergoing deprivation. The author has protected their anonymity by removing identifiable details from re- sponses. 9. Appreciation to all sixty-one participants, including Linda Dobb, Dean of Libraries and Learning Resources at Bowling Green State University, who suggested using WALDEN; and Karin Borei, Director of Library and Information Resources at Trinity College of Vermont, who sent out the survey to WALDEN members and forwarded responses.