Mary Niles Maack, Gender Issues in librarianship
Encyclopedia of library history

The focus of Maack’s article is what she terms the ‘female-intensive’ characteristic of librarianship. A female-intensive occupation is one that is defined in which women comprise a majority of workers in a field but do not hold many leadership or other positions of power. She examines this trend over time and across cultures. Maack describes how this trend began in the US at about the mid-19th century. Until this time mostly men were employed by libraries. After Dewey had established his school and the first class, which consisted mostly of women students, graduated women came to dominate the field. They were considered to be especially well suited for library employment due to various perceived personality traits the possessed. Their perceived physical, mental, and emotional limitations, however, justified to many library leaders the low wages routinely paid to female employees. Winsor and Dewey enthusiastically supported this system. Female library workers were not only discriminated against in terms of the wages but also because regarding the types of positions they held. Higher status library jobs were simply off-limits to them. Maack defines the segregation of female workers to the lower level positions as hierarchical discrimination. Women have also been concentrated in certain types of libraries and specialties. Maack terms this territorial discrimination.
She extends to examination of the feminization of librarianship to several European, Asian, and African countries. She found hierarchical discrimination in Great Britain, France, and Germany and the attitude that women are especially suited for library work had been common. In various Asian and African countries she found the same situation.
Maack concludes with a discussion about the necessity of more extensive research on the role that gender has played in the history and development of librarianship.