Gender & Sexuality in Information Studies Colloquium, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC -- April 23, 2016 http://litwinbooks.com/2016colloquium.php

1. Embracing the Feminization
of Librarianship
Shana Higgins, University of Redlands
Gender & Sexuality in Information Studies Colloquium
April 23, 2016

2. Anderson,R.(2013,January31).InterrogatingtheAmerican
libraryAssociation’s‘CoreValues’statement|peertopeer
review.LibraryJournal.
“I found myself dividing the list of values into three
categories: those that strike me as representing fundamental
principles, those that represent subordinate principles, and
those that (bear with me now) we might do well to
question as core values of librarianship at all.”
“What are the deepest and most basic purposes of the
library?”
“…two things can be simultaneously good and mutually
incompatible. If our profession’s formally-declared values
statement is going to be defensible, it must be coherent.”

3. Our Feminized Labor
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, "Transfer: The Maintenance of the Art Object" (1974),
triple portrait of maintenance person, Ukeles, and museum conservator.
See “Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969! Proposal for an exhibition ‘Care’”

4. Feminine-Coded Masculine-Coded
relationships
responsibilities
situational
empathy
expressiveness
community
rules
rights
abstract
unemotional
individual
economic liberty
Gendering of Values

5. Fox, M., & Olson, H. A. (2013). Essentialism and care in a female-intensive
profession. In Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader. Sacramento,
CA: Litwin Books.

6. Feminine-Coded Masculine-Coded
relationships
responsibilities
situational
empathy
expressiveness
community
--------------------
social responsibility
the public good
politically engaged
interdependent
rules
rights
abstract
unemotional
individual
economic liberty
-------------------
access
service
objective
independent
Gendering of Values: The “Feminine” as Resistance
social responsibility + access = accessibility

7. The “Feminine” as Resistance
durangofoodnotbombs.wordpress.com/2011/07

8. References:
Anderson, R. (2013, January 31). Interrogating the American Library Association’s ‘Core
Values’ statement | peer to peer review. Library Journal.
Collins, P. H. (1989). The social construction of Black feminist thought. Signs: Journal
of Women in Culture and Society, 14(4), 745-773.
Dean, G. (2015). The shock of the familiar: Three timelines about gender and technology
in the library. Digital Humanities Quarterly 9(2).
de Lauretis, T. (1989). The essence of the triangle, or taking the risk of essentialism
seriously. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1(2), 3-37.
Fox, M., & Olson, H. (2013). Essentialism and care in a female-intensive profession. In P.
Keilty & R. Dean (Eds.), Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader.
Gilligan, C. (1986). Reply by Carol Gilligan. Signs, 11(2), 324–333
Goodman, R. T. (2013). Gender work: Feminism after neoliberalism. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Hesford, V. (2013). Feeling Women’s Liberation. Durham: Duke University Press
Kittay, E. F.. (2001). A Feminist Public Ethic of Care Meets the New Communitarian
Family Policy. Ethics, 111(3), 523–547.
Shirazi, R. (2014, July 15). Reproducing the academy: Librarians and the question of
service in the digital humanities.
Ukeles, Mierle Laderman. “Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969! Proposal for an
exhibition ‘Care.’”