Hello colleagues,
I’m curious whether other museum administrative and executive support professionals have had a similar experience. Much of the professional development, management frameworks, and workplace training available for administrative roles seems to come from models developed in traditionally male-dominated leadership and corporate environments. At times, I find that these approaches feel impersonal or misaligned with how many of us actually work and build relationships within our institutions.
Given that administrative and executive support roles remain a largely women-dominated field, I wonder how others navigate training and professional models that may not fully reflect the relational, collaborative, and care-centered aspects of the work many of us practice. In the United States, women hold roughly 93–94% of administrative and executive assistant roles, according to national workforce data and labor statistics. Historically, the profession shifted from male clerical work to predominantly female roles in the early 20th century as office labor expanded and gendered expectations shaped workplace structures—something scholars of labor history and organizational studies have written about extensively.
I would be very interested in hearing from others in the museum field—executive assistants, administrative coordinators, operations staff, and similar roles—about how you approach your work style, professional development, and leadership within these structures.
Is this something others have noticed? If there’s interest, it could be valuable to start a broader conversation about how our field defines and supports this work.
With kindness,
Chamomile
Sources referenced: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics workforce data; Data USA workforce statistics on administrative assistants; historical research on clerical labor including Sharon Hartman Strom’s Beyond the Typewriter: Gender, Class, and the Origins of Modern American Office Work.
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Chamomile Lokey DVM
Gifts and Records Administrator
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Santa Fe NM
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