What Makes a Great Museum Workplace for Women

Baldwin, Joan H.; Ackerson, Anne W.

doi:10.4324/9781315184784-12

Cited by 4 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…When workers observe firsthand how the museum cares for collections objects better than the people who make the museum run (Baldwin and Ackerson, 2017: 163), some funnel their passion for the field into organizing for structural change. It is an activist initiative to situate museum professionals as workers and frame them within a labour movement.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although museum work is imbued with cultural cache for its proximity to wealth, organizing in museums is rarely funded and the field’s long-time association with elitism undermines the sympathy museum workers might receive from would-be supporters. Museum positions are competitive, often demanding graduate degrees for entry-level positions and as a result, museum workers are frequently described as over-credentialed and underpaid (Baldwin and Ackerson, 2017: 175). Often burdened by student debt, museum workers struggle to pay rent in expensive cities on paltry salaries (Steinhauer, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Motivated by social justice aims, recent work on museums is situating the experience of the museum worker as a site that matters and a place for transforming the museum (Catlin-Legutko and Taylor, 2021; Murawski, 2021; Raicovich, 2021; Salerno et al, 2019). Given that the museum sector is a ‘pink collar profession’, some have drawn attention to the experiences of women, including making recommendations for how to address pay inequality, gender stereotypes, and the museum as a workplace for women (Baldwin and Ackerson, 2017). Instead of looking at women or gender in the museum through how it impacts the individual, we centre transformative intersectional feminist organizing that confronts gender-related injustice alongside other forms of structural inequality in the museum (Callihan and Feldman, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Worker-led feminist mobilizing for the museum of the future

Middleton

Hagen

2022

European Journal of Women's Studies

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Museum workers have taken a massive hit during the pandemic when many museums closed their doors, cut staff hours, instituted layoffs and furloughs, and pushed more into precarity. For many workers, the effect of the pandemic has highlighted long-standing issues of racial, economic, gender and political inequality. This article engages with how workers are responding to this insecurity by highlighting worker-led feminist mobilizations for transformation in museums based in the United States and the United Kingdom. By focusing on efforts for engaging with the Black Lives Matter movement, decolonizing the museum, unionizing workers and providing mutual aid, this article examines worker-led practices of transformation of the museum amid crisis. A special emphasis is put on how workers articulate the importance of feminist solidarity and collective action in envisioning a more just museum of the future.

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Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Worker-led feminist mobilizing for the museum of the future

Middleton

Hagen

2022

European Journal of Women's Studies

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“…Furthermore, cultural organizations are perceived as inessential to generating significant personal or community wealth and value (Simon, 2012). Nevertheless, people perceive work in leadership positions as prestigious, especially in large national cultural organizations, because it allows one to influence society through art and culture (Balwin & Ackerson, 2017). As a result, despite the growing number of women working in public cultural organizations, systemic gender discrimination remains deeply entrenched in public cultural organizations around the world (Balwin & Ackerson, 2017).…”

Section: Women and Cultural Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, people perceive work in leadership positions as prestigious, especially in large national cultural organizations, because it allows one to influence society through art and culture (Balwin & Ackerson, 2017). As a result, despite the growing number of women working in public cultural organizations, systemic gender discrimination remains deeply entrenched in public cultural organizations around the world (Balwin & Ackerson, 2017). Banks and Milestone (2011) show how the discourse of "flexibility" and "creative freedom" allowed the creative sector to mask some fundamental inequalities and discriminatory practices in cultural work.…”

Section: Women and Cultural Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women in public cultural organizations and their professional paths strategies: A rhizomatic approach

Góral

2022

Gender Work & Organization

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The aim of this article is to explore the rhizomatic nature of the professional development strategies used by the female workforce of public cultural organizations. The research problem of this study are (1) the challenges of women who work in public cultural organizations and (2) ways of dealing with them by women. The empirical material was collected between January 2021 and January 2022 through 20 in‐depth interviews with female managers of public cultural organizations in Poland. The findings are presented in three sections: (1) specificity of work in culture, (2) twists and configurations on the way to grow, and (3) communities. In this way, it was possible to capture the specific strategies used by the female workforce for the development of their professional paths. To illustrate the complexity of these strategies, the concept of Rhizome—a root structure that grows in unpredictable and manifold directions—developed by Deleuze and Guattari was used. It also highlighted the fact that the professional development strategies used by women develop in a strong relationship with their environment and constantly evolve according to the needs of the women who decide to undertake them. The results of the research illustrate the impact of the far‐reaching gendered nature of work in cultural organizations on the professional development of women in this sector. Moreover, this reveals that to achieve their professional ambitions, women in cultural organizations co‐create complex informal organizational constructs, rhizome‐like in structure, which help women cope with the challenges that arise along their professional paths. These findings contribute to the theory of gendered organizations and the knowledge of gender inequality in cultural organizations.

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Organizers of Museum History: Honoring the Labor of Librarians and Archivists in the Bureau of American Ethnology

Lea,

Emmelhainz

2024

IJoL

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In 1879, the United States funded care for the records of government-funded geological, ethnographic and archaeological explorations in the American West, in what later became known as the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) within the Smithsonian Institution. But who was doing the organizing of library and archival sources so integral to this scientific mission? This article highlights eight women working in the Bureau of American Ethnology library and archives in the early 20th century, including head librarians and archivists Jesse Thomas, Ella Leary, Miriam Ketchum, Carol Jopling, Mae Tucker, and Margaret Blaker, as well as library assistants Louvenia Russell and Ella Slaughter, who were classified as laborers but also conducted library work for the Bureau. We suggest that each of these women served as “glass shoulders,” creating an administrative and scholarly infrastructure that enabled the work of others, even as they advocated for their own value within the Bureau and the wider museum structure. In focusing on how librarians and archivists care for museum collections, we also examine how their work remains almost invisible in museum circles. Telling these stories enables us to honor the work of librarians and archivists in creating and curating museum histories, and to consider how this labor and expertise can be recognized and highlighted.

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What Makes a Great Museum Workplace for Women

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Worker-led feminist mobilizing for the museum of the future

Worker-led feminist mobilizing for the museum of the future

Women in public cultural organizations and their professional paths strategies: A rhizomatic approach

Organizers of Museum History: Honoring the Labor of Librarians and Archivists in the Bureau of American Ethnology

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