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  • 1.  Is the Museum Profession Turning Pink? A New White Paper from GEMM

    Posted 03-14-2019 11:36 AM
    Colleagues,

    In celebration of Women's History Month, the Gender Equity in Museums Movement (GEMM) developed the attached white paper, "Museums as a Pink-Collar Profession: The Consequences and How to Address Them," exploring the implications of gender equity in the museum workforce.

    The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that women comprised almost 50-percent of the museum workforce in 2018. But when we look at the overwhelming number of women in the graduate school pipeline and in museums' junior ranks, GEMM anticipates the field could reach 70-percent female in a decade, thus becoming an official pink-collar profession. While the term 'pink collar' has little to do with education or training (after all, pink collar professions run the gamut from nursing and teaching to wait-staffing and housekeeping), it has everything to do with long-standing cultural definitions of what constitutes appropriate work for women and men. Across the board, female-dominated professions carry with them the economic and social burdens of "women's work." Consequently, society views them as "less-than." 

    The "respect gap," as author Joanne Lipman calls it, is just one of many consequences to being a pink-collar profession. Widening gender gaps in pay and access to promotion are also associated with female-dominated fields. As the white paper points out, female-dominated fields are not exempt from issues with diversity and inclusiveness, parental leave, and sexual harassment.

    Now is the time for the field to collectively understand and address these implications. The white paper offers a variety of actions museum leadership and museum workers can take to ensure more equitable workplaces as one way to attract and retain a creative and diverse workforce.

    GEMM believes this timely issue is worthy of your attention and urges you to share the white paper with your staff, board, and membership.

    Sincerely,

    Anne
    Co-founder, Gender Equity in Museums Movement (GEMM)


    --
    Anne W. Ackerson
    Creative Leadership & Management Solutions
    1914 Burdett Avenue
    Troy, New York  12180
    T:  518-271-2455
    E:  anne@awackerson.com





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  • 2.  RE: Is the Museum Profession Turning Pink? A New White Paper from GEMM

    Posted 03-15-2019 09:33 AM
    Thank you Anne.  Having taught graduate museum studies for sixteen years with the Seton Hall University MA Program in Museum Professions and before that with Columbia University, the New School for Social Research and New York University I can say from experience the vast majority of my students were female.  They were also overwhelmingly white.  Throughout those years I wondered why there were not more men, or, non-white students.  Of course, unless there is an obvious reason for how people make decisions, it is difficult to know why people decline to do something.  GEMM is absolutely doing the right thing and it will prove effective for women in our field.

    Cheers,

    Steve

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    Steven Miller
    Doylestown, PA

    Executive Director Retired
    Boscobel Restoration, Inc.
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  • 3.  RE: Is the Museum Profession Turning Pink? A New White Paper from GEMM

    Posted 03-18-2019 12:27 PM
    Why so many white women? The explanation that comes to mind for me is that they're more likely to have a partner who's got a job with a decent salary and benefits (which museum jobs don't seem to, for the most part). I could never have afforded to pursue this career if I hadn't been married to a man who could actually support our family; now that I'm not married to him anymore, I'm struggling to pay the bills. With a steady stream of young white women (many with supporting partners/parents) coming out of grad school eager for a museum job, there's not a lot of pressure on institutions to pay people enough to live on. And until we figure out how to do that, I don't think we're going to solve this problem. 

    Mikala



    ------------------------------
    Mikala Woodward
    Exhibit Developer
    Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
    Seattle WA
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 4.  RE: Is the Museum Profession Turning Pink? A New White Paper from GEMM

    Posted 03-18-2019 01:15 PM
    Mikala and Steve --

    Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and experiences. You'll be interested in Joan Baldwin's Leadership Matters post today, where she explores the toxic relationship between salaries and bias in predominately female professions. Know, too, these are barriers that contribute to broad diversification of the field.

    Anne

    --
    Anne W. Ackerson
    Creative Leadership & Management Solutions
    1914 Burdett Avenue
    Troy, New York  12180
    T:  518-271-2455
    E:  anne@awackerson.com





    Read my Blog, Leading by Design
    Follow me on Twitter and on LinkedIn
    Visit my Website

    Subscribe to Take 5, the newsletter with a fresh take on nonprofit life



    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 5.  RE: Is the Museum Profession Turning Pink? A New White Paper from GEMM

    Posted 03-18-2019 02:08 PM
    Mikala's thoughtful suggested answer to my question about the huge preponderance of women in my graduate classes is not only well-taken but a continuation of a phenomenon I found entrenched when I landed my first job in 1971.  At that time it was true for men and women.  I mention it in a chapter I have contributed to a pending book about the subject: For Love or Money: The State of Museum Salaries.  (A call for writers was posted on this site.) The majority of male and female college educated museum employees I worked with in the 1970s did not live on their individual salaries.  I and a couple other people my age were the exceptions.  Otherwise, these curators, educators, collection managers, exhibit design staff, etc., either had private wealth or parents or partners who supported them.  This financial reality did not reflect the quality of their work I should note.  But!  It did mean they were less concerned with income and thus less involved in trying to improve pay.  I would have hoped generational shifts and the rise of museum professional ranks would have seen the old income realities change for the better but Mikala confirms otherwise.  Her individual story and the long-long-overdue efforts to improve female employment circumstances simply confirm what we know - much remains to be done.  

    Thank you,

    Steve 



    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 6.  RE: Is the Museum Profession Turning Pink? A New White Paper from GEMM

    Posted 03-19-2019 11:39 AM

    Mikala is spot on here.  Museums (and likely many other nonprofits) have become very dependent on the spousal income subsidy, and this has a sorting effect on who is able to sustain a career working in museums. 

    I had an admittedly anecdotal but interesting conversation last year with a young (25?) visitor who came to a "behind the scenes" event.  She stayed a long time and her questions were mainly about how to go about getting the education/training and experience to do my job.  My job is somewhat uncommon, so many ask me these kinds of questions, but in her case it was different because she went on to say that she herself was interested in pursuing such a career. 

    The "kicker" was when she disclosed that several years ago she received a substantial amount of money in a settlement of some kind, which she used to buy some real estate.  Since recent trends in the market have been very favorable to her, she said that she felt like she could "afford to choose a career like this and just follow my passion."  That suggested to me that even though she had never worked in a museum, her understanding was that doing so could only be a financially safe choice for those who don't really have to worry about their paycheck.  I didn't ask, but I had to wonder if she assumed that all of us working there must be in similar economic positions. 

    Thanks for contributing to the discussion!

          Cheers,

                   Michael



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    Michael Holland
    Principal/Owner
    Michael Holland Productions

    Redmond, WA USA
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 7.  RE: Is the Museum Profession Turning Pink? A New White Paper from GEMM

    Posted 03-19-2019 02:05 PM
    I think that we also need to consider that not only is the pipeline full of young women ready to move into the workforce, but that the pipeline is FULL of young women (and men) waiting to move into the workforce.  This is a problem in many cultural professions.  I am a museum archivist and work closely with librarians as well.  All three of these professions (museum/archives/library professionals) are overloaded with young graduates that can't get a decent-paying full-time job.  This is only going to place more downward pressure on wages for both men and women.

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    Gregory Jackson
    Archivist
    Glencairn Museum
    Bryn Athyn PA
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  • 8.  RE: Is the Museum Profession Turning Pink? A New White Paper from GEMM

    Posted 03-19-2019 02:17 PM
    Gregory: Yup.

    Add to that the genuine lack of available funds to bring wages and salaries up, and you have a fairly intractable problem.

    Mikala

    ------------------------------
    Mikala Woodward
    Exhibit Developer
    Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
    Seattle WA
    ------------------------------

    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more