Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 16:37:17 -0500
From: Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: equal pay
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

"Strong, Lee" wrote:

>         One of the refreshing experiences in my life was attending library
> science school where a majority of your professional peers are women.
> Originally, librarianship was considered a "man's job" just like all other
> 19th Century professions.  However, the founder of modern library science,
> Melvil Dewey, admitted women to study librarianship on an equal,
> nondiscriminatory basis with men.  Women flooded into a field where they
> were treated with respect, and, as a result, librarianship is now often
> considered a "traditionally" "woman's job."
>         Real life is wonderful because it refuses to conform to
> expectations.

My mother has a degree in Library Science from Drexel.  She never used it,
spending all of her subsequent working life as a teacher.  There were few
*positions* for librarians in the midst of the Depression.

At my last (40th) high school reunion I was talking with several of my female
classmates, one of whom had become the president of a university.   They all
agreed that even in the mid-'50s women were being steered, educationally, into
becoming "home makers," with Very Few careers available.  Those careers which
*were* available to women were teaching, nursing and librarians.  All of these
women had felt constricted by the career-choices available to them as
intelligent women; all of them made the most of what was available.   And all
felt that things had opened up a lot by their daughters' times.

So think about why women "flooded" into librarianship:  It was one of very few
career opportunities.

It took WW2 (and woman subbing in traditionally male jobs, like construction) to
prove that gender descrimination was based on false premises (that women were
"inferior").  But when GIJoe mustered out, women were pushed out of those jobs
again for a full generation.

--Ted White