All posts filed under “gender”

October 6, 2017
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Growth in Connection

two hands holding one another

Hand in hand as one by Anete Lusina via Unsplash.com

Last summer I read Women’s Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center, and it may have changed my life. It was published in 1991 by a group of women psychologists working at the Wellesley College Stone Center as a feminist response to traditional (aka clinically accepted, aka Western, aka masculine) models of human psychological development. It turned the notion of women as emotionally deficient on its head, arguing that existing models of development didn’t account for women’s experiences in the world. The Stone Center scholars, clinicians, and educators used their experiences working at women both in and out of Wellesley to describe what they saw as a relational model of human development, one where women, and really all of us, grow in our lives through relationships with others. What traditional developmental researchers at the time saw as co-dependency, these women framed as a healthy way of working through the world. Their development of relational cultural theory was, and continues to be (to me) mind-blowing. We grow through connections with others. We grow through relationships.

Before reading these essays and case studies I’d never really stopped to think why I’d internalized this idea of being independent, alone, and totally self-sufficient as being successful in life, when culturally, my Mexican-American upbringing always stressed family and strong ties among women within that family unit. It also forced me to think about ways in which I was forcing that independence, and really distance, on my son, who is just naturally one of those children who thrives on the confidence and positive reinforcement he receives from close meaningful relationships. Why can’t he take a bit more time to grow through our connection as mother and son?

This collection of course also brought to mind so much of the work that we do in libraries. I have a chapter in the forthcoming book, Reference Librarianship & Justice, on relational theory, the concept of mutuality, and reference work, and am thinking more and more about the ways in which so much of our work as librarians is rooted in relationship, and how those relationships can either be vehicles for empowerment and personal growth, or simply leave us unchanged and unmoved. There is of course, the issue that relationships require the involvement of someone beyond yourself, but in keeping with the writings of the Stone Center folks, there are ways in which we can move through the world that increase the likelihood of more meaningful, even powerful relationships.

The word empathy gets thrown around a lot these days, in conversations about everything from child-rearing to website development, to user experience research. What I like about the Stone Center definition of empathy is that it is a deep connection in which people are open to truly understanding one another. It is affirming and mutually enriching. It isn’t about using empathy for some kind of corporate gain like creating a better user interface, or selling more product. It’s about using empathy to forge a meaningful connection that will help both people grow and change.

But back to librarianship…

I’ve been thinking so much about the notion of the “information literate individual” and how our concept of this mythical person in many ways conflicts with a relational theory of development and also contradicts itself. In academic libraries we want to create independent, information literate researchers, but we also want them to know that they are part of a scholarly community. We want them to have their own voice and question the authority of others, but we don’t talk about the ways in which we all compromise both our voice and authority in our daily lives. We want our students to be able to do things on their own, do their own work, find their own information, but so much of our work is about working together with other colleagues, faculty, and and students. Our Framework for Information Literacy talks about communities of learning and seeking guidance from others, but I wish it also spoke to the need for relationships in learning and understanding the world of information, and the ways in which we as librarians can forge those relationships.

I’ll end with one last thought from the October issue of the SGI Living Buddhism magazine, which, in the way that all things converge in my life, was about mentoring relationships. The description of mentor-mentee or teacher-student relationships was so in line with relational theory. The bonds we make with our students and colleagues shouldn’t be hierarchical; the foundation should be one of “mutual trust” and “common purpose.” When we work together, through a relationship, towards a shared goal, we bring a piece of ourselves to the interaction, but we also open ourselves to possibility and growth. In those moments I’m happiest being a librarian because I’m happiest as a person. I feel as though I’ve actually connected to someone else and made a small imprint on them, and they’ve done the same to me.

 

March 8, 2017
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Reading Roma Harris on International Women’s Day

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I’ve been consumed by and consuming one book this past week, and it seems fitting to write about it on International Women’s Day. Roma Harris’ Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman’s Profession is, at its core, a defense of women. Harris deconstructs the “problems” within librarianship and argues that they are fundamentally rooted in the field’s feminization within a sexist society that undervalues and dismisses women and women’s work. This book was published in 1992, but it is still. so. damn. relevant. Every other page is flagged, copious notes have been taken, and I may have even underlined one or two things (in pencil, lightly).

I encourage you to read it, to get a sense of the supremely important role gender (and gender performance) has played in the construction of our profession over the past hundred and fifty years. But I want to focus on one chapter in particular: The aptly named “Self-doubt and Self-blame.” Harris writes:

In an ambitious content analysis of the library literature, Bennett observed what he referred to as a “mea culpa” convention in the field, that is, the “criticism of librarians, libraries, and librarianship by librarians themselves” …librarians often blame each other for what are, in fact, externally imposed barriers to progress…Some turn their anger inward, pointing accusing fingers at one another for being too feminine, too masculine, or not enough of either. Others see that the barriers to progress are externally imposed and choose to fight back or leave these professions entirely.

As I read this chapter, all I could think was, Yes. Yes to all of this. I am often a self-doubter and a self-blamer, and, when things get really dark, a self-denigrator. I question my parenting choices, my career decisions, and my day-to-day existence as a woman. I wonder if I couldn’t be living better, which, as I write it, feels a bit preposterous. You live the life you live. But in this world, even as a woman who inhabits a fair amount of privilege, it’s still easier to see myself as being to blame when things go wrong or when things get difficult. Yes, personal responsibility is important, but it’s equally important, if not more so, for the individual to be able to critique the larger system of which they are a part. But I never can seem to get beyond blaming myself.

I often take all of this self-doubt and blame and transfer it from my personal life to my own work. Just yesterday I felt as though I wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t being effective enough, wasn’t making enough of my difference in my library and at my college. I know, intellectually, that I am being hard on myself and doing what my mother and countless other women often do–blaming ourselves because we’re easiest to blame. But emotionally, my ego takes over and I become the person to blame for all of the things that could be done better.

I think drawing that comparison to how we treat our own profession is spot on. I find myself doing it, too, at times. I think there is nothing wrong with being critical of our profession. It’s needed to call out issues of inequity and spark creativity. But I do think there is a problem with disparaging our work in our lowest moments as being unimportant, out-of-touch, or irrelevant. Our constant preoccupation with what’s next in libraries makes it easy for us to dismiss and not build on the important work we do right now. Instead of, as Harris states, “taking the battle outside,” we fight it amongst ourselves.

We librarians need to be more like this…
We librarians don’t have anything new to contribute…
We librarians need to stop doing this…
We librarians should be more like these people in these fields…

Take for example, my reaction at a recent conference session. Wonderful librarians were presenting on faculty development and faculty-librarian collaboration and talked about using the question “How can we [librarians] help you [faculty]?” I immediately did an inward eyeroll and thought: That’s the problem with us librarians. We keep setting ourselves up to be doormats. The problem isn’t necessarily with the critique, because unequal power relationships between teaching faculty and librarians (whatever our status) are a real thing, but with the direction of the anger. Why wasn’t my reaction: *eyeroll* That’s the problem with neoliberal educational structures. They’re all about efficiency and hierarchy,  and when they combine with sexism, you get this uneven power relationship between librarians and faculty that force those kinds of questions/statements. 

It’s easier to blame ourselves, to encourage the librarian to be more professional, more knowledgeable, more accommodating, more MORE. It’s hard to demand change from deeply entrenched power structures. The fact that Harris’ writing still echoes my day-to-day work life 25 years after it was written is proof enough that our efforts at transforming “librarianship” into something more/better/bigger/faster/smarter are not going to save us. We don’t need the saving. The structures we exist in are what need to change.