Open Forum

Leadership Matters released highlights this week from its recent survey examining the extent of gender discrimination in the museum workforce. The attached infographic's statistics are drawn from a survey conducted by Leadership Matters on Facebook from March through May 2018 to which more than 700 people responded.

The brainchild of Anne W. Ackerson, co-author of Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Workplace, the survey is an attempt to get a sense of where the museum workplace is in the wake of a year of #MeToo incidents. "The survey confirms what we suspected, but hoped wasn't true," Ackerson said. "Despite its reputation, the museum workplace mirrors the working world at large." Sixty-two-percent (62%) of the survey's respondents reported that they had been the victim of or witnessed gender discrimination at work. "This is a wake-up call for museums, professional associations and graduate programs that there's critical work to be done to promote equitable and safe workplaces," she continued, adding, "It seems clear that for museums working toward long term sustainability, gender equity and inclusion must be part of the equation."

Forty-nine-percent (49%) of the respondents reported being a victim of verbal or sexual harassment, and more than half of the respondents say their paychecks reflect the gender pay gap. In addition to answering questions, survey respondents also wrote hundreds of comments, providing a rich commentary on everything from "mansplaining" to the difficulty of being heard to whether they feel more or less optimistic regarding gender equity in 2018.

"Gender equity isn't the sole province of cis-gender women," said Joan Baldwin, who is the primary author of the Leadership Matters blog, and is a co-author with Ackerson of Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Workplace. LGBTQ employees also face workplace discrimination as witnessed by this quote: "Because I'm gay, I have had employees not talk to me or make eye contact with me, treat me differently and have used hate speech about gay people four-feet from me."

For more information: https://leadershipmatters1213.wordpress.com/women-museums/