Centenary features

'Not only suitable, but specially attractive'

Evelyn Kerslake

How has the Record treated women workers of the profession? Although not blatantly sexist, it has not been gender neutral, says Evelyn Kerslake. And looking back on 100 years of women in libraries, with all its frustrations and triumphs, should inform our thinking on contemporary issues of prejudice and exclusion.

In the100 years since the Record was begun, women's employment in libraries has gone through many changes. At the turn of the century, librarianship had few male takers, and still fewer women. In 1909, James Duff Brown found a total of 2,741 librarians and assistants in Britain, of whom 41 per cent were women. But by 1923-24, women workers were outnumbering men - a trend that was to increase, until, in the 1960s, women accounted for approximately 70 per cent of the library workforce.

Whilst proportionately and absolutely the numbers of women library workers increased, they were, on the whole, poorly paid and they continued throughout the century to receive low pay - both in contrast to men library workers and in comparison to women working in similar occupations, such as teaching. For example, while, in 1910-15, qualified women teachers received an average annual salary of just over £104, similarly qualified women librarians received around £90.

It wasn't all gloom for women in the sector, however. Librarianship, at certain periods, offered women the possibility of working not only at paraprofessional and professional levels but also in the most senior posts in their organisations. The early years of the county systems, for example, saw almost equal numbers of men and women chief county librarians. There were also opportunities to travel on exchange programmes, work on national and international committees, develop new types of library work - all aspects of a dynamic sector, marked by a shared sense of purpose.

Record representations

So, how did the Record represent these diverse and enthusiastic women workers who, as the century wore on, came to represent significant proportions of both the LA membership and the workforce, and were also, on occasion, senior librarians within the profession?

Many commentators, both at the turn of the century and more recently, have described library work as one of the 'new' careers for women, which began with their employment in public libraries at Manchester in 1871. Minnie Stewart Rhodes James, writing in 1899, was keen, however, to establish that women had been engaging in various aspects of library work over a substantial length of time. She herself had no public library experience, as she worked in the People's Palace library in the East End of London. She also cited, as examples, women who worked at the British Museum, in Stead's travelling libraries, at the Royal Society and at Hampstead Subscription library.

Minnie Stewart Rhodes James (1865-1903)

Minnie Stewart Rhodes James is primarily known as the librarian at the People's Palace library, in the East End of London. She strongly believed that librarianship needed to develop training schemes and she was instrumental in persuading the LA to investigate training, which led to the formation of the first library summer schools. After leaving the People's Palace, she was briefly curator of the Library Association Museum of Library Appliances, established by James Duff Brown, and in 1894 began to work for the Library Bureau.

Academic libraries were singled out by Minnie James as the one type of library which seldom employed women. She noted 'the brilliant exception' of Lucy Toulmin Smith, who was librarian at Manchester College, Oxford long before the university saw fit to admit women students. Further contemporary women academic librarians included Fanny Passavant at the Yorkshire College and Miss Guiness at Holloway College. Lucy Toulmin Smith, like Minnie James, had given a paper on librarianship and women at the 1899 International Congress of Women in the section on professional work, and this also appeared in the Record.

Lucy Toulmin Smith, a distinguished scholar as well as a librarian, argued that women were no newer to library work than men workers, as, at the turn of the century, the profession was itself only recently established. She also maintained that 'more has been done in England than is commonly supposed' regarding the employment of women in libraries, and went on to list a number of public libraries which employed women. She also cited a recent advertisement in the Athenaeum which required 'a lady library assistant with experience in public library work' as evidence that demand for ready trained women library workers was increasing.

Minnie James's article, too, emphasised the need for training in library work. Furthermore, she argued that women, and especially educated women, were already 'peculiarly fitted' for careers in library work. She suggested that such women had not only the appropriate educational background for this type of work, but also that this was augmented by their 'natural' qualities of being 'instinctively quick, tactful and patient'. This, she felt, particularly suited women workers to cataloguing work and she exclaimed with 'great wonderment' that few such women worked in libraries in 'really responsible positions'.

Natural abilities

The idea that women's natural abilities made them suited to library work was developed in an article published in the Record in 1921 by Maud Storr Best who worked at Aberdeen University library. She emphasised two supposedly innate feminine virtues - accuracy and conscientiousness - as invaluable assets in any library worker. Combined, she said, these qualities prevented the 'slipshod work' which caused library work to create confusion and the loss of important items. She wrote, 'give me a girl with an accurate mind and a conscientious spirit, and I will show you the beginnings of a first-class librarian'.

The theme of women workers as the new recruits within the library workforce was continued in various ways throughout the century with the regular appearance in various media of articles claiming to have spotted the 'first woman [chief librarian/ keeper at the British Library/noun-of-choice]'. An example of this appears in 1919, when a lengthy dispute lasting some weeks was published on the letters page of the Observer over a claim that a recent appointment at Chertsey heralded the first woman chief public librarian. The Record stepped in to authoritatively denounce this as a 'quaint claim' indeed. It identified Hannah Eteson, appointed librarian at Blackpool in 1880, as the first woman to become a chief public librarian in England. Scotland, however, may claim the first British woman chief public librarian, by the appointment in 1879 of a Mrs Elliot to Hawick public library.

The first woman president of the Library Association, elected in 1966, was no exception to this 'first woman...' trend. Lorna Paulin's presidential address, printed in the Record in 1966, begins by acknowledging the debt she and the profession owe to women, and her personal debt to the founder of both the Kent and Gloucestershire county library systems, Nancy Cooke. Meanwhile, the Record offered reassurance, as if it were needed, that the Library Association's under Lorna Paulin's leadership was 'in capable hands'.

The 'over-feminisation' question

Accompanying, and later overtaking, the claims that women were 'novelty' library workers, were loudly-voiced concerns that the library workforce was becoming 'overfeminised'. This much-used term is rarely defined and there is the feeling that for some writers any woman in the profession was too many. Certainly, it was not suggested in the years up to 1920, when men were numerically dominant, that the profession was 'overmasculinised'.

Early hints of the 'overfeminisation' debate appear in discussions on the gendered composition of the library workforce during both World Wars. However, the debate really took off with the publication of two articles in the Record by A. G. S. Enser. Taking his lead from American concerns about its public library workforce, which Enser characterised as 'grossly over-feminized', and from similar warnings by eminent British librarians such as Lionel McColvin, Enser's article in 1948 cited an apparently worrying ratio of six women to every one man entering the profession.

The articles caused outrage. Although, in the earlier paper, Enser denied the piece was 'an attack upon the gentler sex', (original emphasis) it is difficult to see how to otherwise understand his warning that 'the writing is on the wall' that women may one day occupy 'the chiefships of such 'plums' as Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool and even Westminster itself.' Heaven forfend.

Lancashire chief county librarian Florence Cooke led the rebuttal against Enser suggesting that 'antifeminization like anti-semitism appears to be endemic to this world'. A highly charged accusation at any time, but so much more so in 1948. She suggested that a far worse danger to the health of the profession and the Library Association was the 'festering sore of resentment and frustration' built up among women workers by curtailed career opportunities and blatant sex discrimination. Enser dismissively replied by accusing her 'feminism so rampant' that it demonstrated 'that the regiment of women is monstrous indeed'.

The charge of 'overfeminization', however, was selectively applied to librarianship. Only rarely has the claim been made in relation to, say, children's librarianship. Here, however, librarians such as Eileen Colwell at Hendon were supreme. Similarly, the early county libraries seem to have escaped embroilment in this argument, despite the numbers of women at all levels here.

Fundamentally, the proportion of women in the library workforce was understood as problematic for the profession as, time and again, women were held responsible for lowering rates of pay. Rena Cowper's 1940 article in the Record took on the issue of the lack of equal pay in libraries. She compared the fight against sex discrimination in the workplace as part of the democratic bulwark against reactionary, political forces and urged women workers to challenge the 'barrier of sex discrimination' which persisted despite the vote having been won.

Equal pay - a missed opportunity

The Library Association in 1946, passed up an opportunity to support its women members and the campaign for equal pay. Its statement to the Royal Commission on Equal Pay, published in the Record, continued to peddle stereotypical notions of women as 'most suitable' for work with children, whilst men were to be encouraged in to the profession because they were more likely than women to be 'capable of assuming effectively' the responsibilities of senior posts.

Lucy Toulmin Smith (1838-1911)

Currently the only woman librarian mentioned in the Dictionary of National Biography, Lucy Toulmin Smith was also a scholar and published famous editions of the York Mystery Plays, Leland's Itinerary and the Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land by Henry, Earl of Derby, (later Henry IV) in 1390-1 and 1392-3. She became librarian at Manchester College, Oxford in 1894. This picture of her hangs in the entrance of the college library.

Despite these comments, equal pay did arrive in libraries - if only because of the Equal Pay Act of 1970 (implemented 1975). However, Liz Chapman, writing in 1978, commented that despite equal opportunity legislation not much seemed to have changed.

The marriage bar

Until the 1960s, the marriage bar was one of the reasons given to explain women's lower levels of pay. If women resigned on marriage, the argument went, then they could not expect to be appointed to the better paying, senior posts. Bristol librarian W. S. Haugh, writing in the Record in 1962, used an amended version of the 'overfeminization' argument to argue that 'we need a larger ratio of men to women' because most women married in their early 20s and left the labour market. Whilst earlier generations had benefited from unmarried 'career women' who were sometimes appointed to senior posts, Haugh argued, librarianship in the 1960s was 'facing a society without spinsters'.

Later in the decade, the married women former library workers in question began to make their voices heard, in letters which surely have echoes of Betty Frieden's Feminine Mystique. But this problem, unlike the one identified by Frieden, did have a name: the lack of part-time work. In May 1968, letters began to appear in the Record questioning the apparently blanket refusal of public library authorities to offer part-time positions. Perhaps the letters were inspired by Patricia Layzell Ward's analysis of women in library work, published by the Library Association in 1966, which recommended that the much discussed shortages of qualified staff could be remedied by encouraging married women to return to the workforce on a part-time basis.

The debate was re-run in more letters in the Record later the following year under the headline, 'Library work for housewives'. No solution was identified, however, the broader implementation of more flexible approaches to working patterns in libraries can be identified arising from around this time.

Although it was hardly at the front of 1970s second wave feminism, the Record, too, felt the shifts taking place in the labour market as a result of social change and equal opportunity legislation. Significantly for the profession, this meant a lengthening of the time that women, married or not, spent in paid work. Elaine Kempson's article in the Record's 1985 special issue on women illustrated that in 1972, most women library workers were under 30, whilst men were spread throughout the age ranges. She went on to illustrate how, the numbers of women workers in different age ranges had smoothed out so that although there were still many women under 30 working in libraries, there was a far less dramatic decrease in the older age brackets.

Special issue on women

The special issue prompted a response from the West Midlands branch of the Women in Libraries group who, despite their impressive membership in the 1970s, rarely featured in the Record. The issues Women in Libraries discussed in their meetings and conferences finally made it into the Record in the mid-90s, with discussions of the 'glass ceiling' (1995) and the impacts on women workers of taking career breaks (1994).

Lorna Paulin, the first woman President of the LA, pictured in the January 1966 Record, on taking up the Presidency.

So, on the basis of this brief survey, how has the Record treated women library workers? Despite the numerical significance of women throughout most of this century, the Record has been, for the most part, determinedly unaware of gender - which is not to say it has achieved a position of neutrality regarding gender politics.

By refusing to engage in the type of blatant sexism found occasionally in other UK library journals, it found some room for contributions on the position of women in library employment. But lack of awareness also meant that particular issues facing women were ignored. The fight for equal pay and the need for part-time employment are both examples of issues which concerned women greatly. The Record failed to address either issue in any depth.

This is a shame - for the Record, for the individual women and for the profession. But it is by recognising this type of practice and what that meant, that the same mistakes need not happen again - at least not in the same way. By recovering what has happened in the library past and developing understandings of it, we can further articulate and contextualise current understandings of contemporary situations.

Evelyn Kerslake is writing her PhD, on the history of women workers in English libraries, at the Department of Information and Library Studies, Loughborough University. This article is based on research funded by the Department. The quote in the headline is from James, M. S. R. 'Women Librarians and their Future Prospects.' Library Association Record, June 1900, pp. 291-304.

© The Library Association
Last updated: 11 December 98