From the Editor-in-Chief

The guest-edited section in this issue of JME explores gender-related issues in museums though an intersectional lens. It adds new perspectives and nuance to a long conversation about equity, power, and representation that women in the museum field have been addressing publicly and vocally – that is, on the record – for half a century. According to Joan Baldwin, Curator of Special Collections at The Hotchkiss School and adjunct faculty member at John Hopkins, the first national call for change occurred in 1973, when

Susan Stitt formed a group called the Women’s Caucus at AAM’s annual meeting. A year later Stitt and her Caucus returned with a list of demands. Chief among them was a plea to AAM to “draw up guidelines for adoption by AAM concerning fair hiring practices with regard to women.”¹

In 1986 the Smithsonian hosted a four-day conference, Women’s Changing Roles in Museums. According to an archive finding aid, “the conference had three aims: to examine women’s participation in museums in historical perspective; to identify the qualities and the professional skills needed to attain positions of leadership in museums; to assess future roles for women museum professionals.”² Although none of the sessions overtly addressed issues of wage parity, the premise of the conference rest upon a shared recognition of gender inequities in the field that needed to be addressed. More than 200 people attended the conference, attesting to the topic’s resonance.

In 1990, the Smithsonian once again hosted an event about women in the field, this time a seminar called Gender Perspectives: The Impact of Women on Museums.³ Its broad-ranging goals were to

• “Examine in historical perspective women’s impact on museums.

• Share experiences which demonstrate that gender perspectives may have a significant impact on the scholarly and educational pursuits of museums.

• Identify societal and technological changes which affect museums.

• Assess scholarly, educational and leadership roles for women as museum professionals.

• Look to museums of the future for gender perspective impact.”⁴

Seminar organizer Jane Glaser lamented that “American museums have ignored [the] feminist movement since its inception.”⁵ She noted the small numbers of women in leadership positions – out of 1000 art museums only 150 were directed by women, and only 20 out of the 200 director-members of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) were women.⁶ Even a quarter of a century later, fewer than half of AAMD’s members are women, and “the average female director’s salary lags behind that of the average make director,” according to 2014 study by AAMD.⁷

The wage gap between what men and women earn in the United States is still large: on average, women earn only 80% of what men earn for the same jobs, according to a 2016 study by the American Association of University Women. The pay gap for Latina, African American, and Native American women is considerably bigger.⁸ The AAMD study found that the women who direct the largest art museums earn only 71% of what men earn as directors of large art museums, which is an even bigger gap than the national average, although interestingly, women who direct art museums with budgets of less than $15 million earn slightly more than their male counterparts ($1.02 for every $1.00 that men make in comparable positions).⁹

The toll that job inequities take is substantial. Burnout is one result. In the early 1990s, Jean Weber, then Director of the Maine Maritime Museum, wrote about women who came into her office with concerns about job equity: “These are people who have had it with the burnout and the unrecognized achievements.”¹⁰ A study of 2026 people that investigated the impact of burnout by scholars at the University of Montreal found that women reported higher levels of burnout due to lack of decision-making authority, lack of skill utilization as well as the pressures of managing families while working.¹¹

Burnout and disillusion with the working conditions contribute to a brain drain in low-paying museum jobs. In 2017 museum professionals Sarah Erdman, Claudia Ocello, Dawn Estabrooks Salerno, and Marieke Van Damme conducted an informal survey to see if they could capture some of the reasons that people leave the field. With more than 1000 responses, they found that low pay was the single biggest reason, and survey responders said that increasing pay would be the best way to retain workers. They also called out the stresses of balancing life and work, poor benefits, heavy workloads, and work schedule demands.¹²

Guest editors Margaret Middleton and Sage Morgan-Hubbard and the authors of this JME section take these issues and more and interrogate them with fresh eyes. They have defined gender in new ways that are far more inclusive – and these new definitions have widened the pool and discussion, and thus the possibility that things could change. They discuss strategies for creating better work environments, and how museums can rethink the ways that they interact with visitors. This issue will provoke some aha moments; new ways of thinking about what museums do and what museums can become. What will it take to make change and address gender equity? The articles in this guest-edited section should help you and your museum take action.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Susan Spero, Professor of Museum Studies at John F. Kennedy University and Museum Education Roundtable board member, for inspiring and editing this introduction.

About the author

Cynthia Robinson is the director of museum studies and senior lecturer at Tufts University, where she specializes in museum education. She spent 25 years working in and with museums and has extensive experience in developing programs, curricula, and exhibitions, as well as in museum management and administration. Cynthia received the 2017 John Cotton Dana Award for Leadership, presented by the Education Committee of the American Alliance of Museums. The award recognizes individuals outside the field of museum education who exhibit outstanding leadership and promote the educational responsibility and capacity of museums. It has only been awarded 9 times in the past 32 years.

Notes

1 Baldwin, “Question of Gender.”

2 National Arts Administration and Policy Publications Database, “Women’s Changing Rose in Museum.”

3 Glaser, “Impact of Women on Museums,” xxiii.

4 Ibid., 180.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., 181.

7 Gan, “Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships,” 2.

8 AAUW, “Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap,” 1.

9 Gan, “Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships,” 2.

10 Weber, “Changing Roles and Attitudes,” 35.

11 Beauguard, “Gendered Pathways to Burnout,” 430–1.

12 Erdman, “Leaving the Field.”