Are we there yet? Feminist approaches in information science

It seems to me that the processes shaping the future of this field cannot be fully understood by ignoring the fact that for more than 100 years library work…has been women’s work. (Harris, 1992, p. 17)

Introduction

Thirty years ago Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman’s Profession (1992) provided a clarion call for specific, radical approaches to the field in what Harris deemed might be a new return to ‘the old librarianship’ representing a 'brand of female professionalism' (p. 163). Harris offered clear guidelines to reinvigorate the field, righting it on its moorings, that included 'advocacy for equitable access to information' and championing equality in the professional workplace (p. 164). These issues remain unresolved even as we consistently introduce theory from other disciplines and develop our evidence base in information science. The goal of equity in the field has expanded with the growth of social and political theories. Yet, the profession and its research take their cues from our institutions. Three decades on, we have not heeded Harris’ admonishment to create and control a field informed by feminist values and practices. This paper examines the current state of feminist scholarship in information science using two cases (leadership and data science) and discusses the need for newscholarship to inform future practice.

An agenda of our own

Standing at the foot of the third-wave of feminism in North America, Harris (1992) pointed to the necessity of a 'common feminist agenda' in the field (p. 163). Hannigan (1994), in the interest of building that agenda, determined that we must look outside the field for feminist theory, noting 'it is also very distressing that much theory and research in the field seems oblivious to feminist scholarship' (p. 299). She posited that some of this lack of feminist analysis is due to researchers’ focus on the user rather than on the librarians themselves. Nearly a decade later, Turock (2001) again pointed to the lack of feminist scholarship, particularly concerning women in library leadership. Later, in 2015, Neigel reminds us that there 'exists a significant problem of gender inequity, because senior leadership positions have been, and continue to be, occupied by a disproportionate number of men' (p. 522). Most recently, Costello and Floegel (2021) offer feminist technoscience as an understudied theory in the field; their work demonstrates, yet again, that there is still much to learn from a feminist approach to scholarship and practice.

Why feminism?

Across various subfields in information science, a feminist lens would enable researchers and practitioners to identify missed opportunities in our studies of users and information contexts, and to strive for equity and social justice. Our field is notoriously pragmatic and solution focused; feminism is not suggested here as another solution to the problems with which we grapple but rather as a way of understanding and redressing power so it is more appropriately and effectively plied. Feminism offers a different way of thinking about our ever-changing field, allowing us 'to identify, describe, theorize and potentially dismantle inequities' that hold us back from true forward movement (Costello and Floegel, 2021, p. 1149). Hines (2019), who analyses two significant problems in library leadership recruitment, gender and race, explains the reason to think differently about leadership: 'we want to create dynamic environments that attract and nurture dynamic employees in order to provide visionary services, collections, and resources to our communities' (p. 12). What Hines (2019) wants for leadership could be applied more broadly to the goals for feminism in information science: to improve the field by ensuring that we are energised, responsive, and future oriented.

Here, we present two brief analyses, on leadership and data science. The first is a topic with a long history in the field, where scholars have explored various management and leadership practices in the field. The second is an area that has emerged more recently, alongside big data, artificial intelligence, and other new technologies. These are useful examples to highlight areas that would benefit from feminist analysis, broadly. We present the two cases, separately, followed by a reflection on next steps to inform future research.

A leadership of our own

To date, the study of leadership in libraries has not received a full feminist analysis, despite being traditionally male-dominated. In 1991, 80% of librarians were female, but 80% of library leaders were male (Kaufman, 1993, p. 109); by 2005, leadership roles in libraries had become nearly 60% female (Zemon and Bahr in Jones, 2008, p. 11), but not in technologically-focused contexts. Information technology teams in libraries, for example, are ~30% female and offer fewer opportunities for female leadership (Askey and Hinchliffe, 2017, para. 15; Cherry and Boman, 2019, pp. 104-105). Much leadership literature addresses organisational behaviour and, when it does address gender, it does so from an essentialist place of norms in relation to leadership style; here, women are positioned as soft and collaborative, while men are seen as strong and confident (Kaufman, 1993; Turock, 2001; Bladek, 2019). Early work on women in library leadership makes clear that gender does not improve one’s standing in the eyes of the team: 'There is no real evidence, however, to support the thesis that women make better leaders than men' (Kaufman, 1993, p. 122). The thesis, however, is not who makes better leaders but how do we create a feminist agenda and feminist structures to diversify leadership?

Deyrup (2004) claimed that leadership 'parity in the academic library field has reached a satisfactory resolution,' and urged us to turn our attention to 'recruitment and retention' - both worthy causes (p. 249). Indeed, the literature of the early 2000s is rife with the opinion that the goals of the second-wave agenda were achieved (Jones, 2008; Moran, et al., 2009). However, by 2013, DeLong cautioned 'the pace of change and acceptance of women in leadership roles continues to be slow, perhaps even slackening,' harkening back to the idea that the agenda is invisible, if it is there at all (p. 69). As Olin and Millet (2015) suggest, we are still in a place where, 'we are not doing it [leadership] the way people want us to do it. We do not act like men' (para. 2). Indeed, that women do not act like men has been clearly established in the early leadership literature, as have notions that women are pulled in more directions due to personal responsibilities. But what if these are not problems to be overcome? What if they are merely considerations as we create our own agenda?

Calling gender back in

Julien (2005), in her work on information behaviour, explains that gaps in the research exist precisely because gender has not been explored overtly. In 2015, Neigel again calls gender back in:

'Informed by its history, gender remains an integral component to the field's evolution. Gender directly informs the ways in which practitioners understand themselves in the context of the field and the ways they are able to act' (p. 531).

Essentially, gender should inform the ways in which we lead, the vision we create for our field, and the structures in which we labour. Turock (2001) understood this when she encouraged the library to 'be the model' for the parent organisation rather than waiting for change from outside (p. 113). Jones’ (2008) small study of three American college libraries focuses on structure, rather than exclusively on gendered leadership, and highlights that bureaucracy and hierarchies in academic libraries are anti-feminist. Though leaders themselves may be female and feminist, flattening hierarchies and eliminating bureaucracy are true signs of feminist leadership and organisational principles. DeLong (2012) shares the cautionary tale of Adelaide Hasse, considered a difficult, vocal woman, who brought great gains to American librarianship in the early 20th century; Hasse was ultimately the target of a campaign by her male supervisors that eventually saw her terminated from the New York Public Library (p. 4). Allowing for difference in leadership, whether it be from difficult women; women from diverse backgrounds, abilities, or racialised groups; or women from all over the gender spectrum, would be a true mark of third-wave feminism. We are not yet there.

Our feminism is intersectional

It is essential to note that when we discuss feminism in 2022, it is necessarily intersectional, though this may not have been the case in early scholarship. According to Hill Collins (2014), intersectionality is an analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form mutually constructing features of social organisation, which shape Black women’s experiences and, in turn, are shaped by Black women' '(p. 299). This description is often extended to include people who do not identify as women and/or Black. No analysis is complete without also considering the effects of racialisation, sexual orientation, class, and ability on gender; but, as Ingold and Searing explain in Jones (2008), gender is 'often subsumed' under broader discussions of multiculturalism (p. 37). After all, true parity has not been achieved in leadership, where the breakdown would need to be 80/20 female/male to reflect the field’s demographics. If the gender gap had truly been 'obliterated' (Le, 2019, p. 21), more women would have the opportunity to lead, if desired, regardless of race, class, ability, or sexual orientation; and, that persistent wage gap, however negligible, would finally be closed (Galbraith, et al., 2019). Feminist research incorporating myriad voices is needed to explore and illuminate the limitations of leadership from an intersectional perspective.

The third-wave: inclusiveness and personal choice?

For the purposes of this paper, the waves or movements within feminism are defined as follows: the first wave, or women’s suffrage movements, occurred in the 19th century and into the early 20th century, and was concerned with voting, property rights, and women’s rights within the family; the second wave, or 'radical' feminism, was concerned with social and political inequality, and occurred in the mid 20th century, ending in the early 1990s; the third wave, or identity and diversity feminism, began in 1992 and was concerned with questioning the essentialism of earlier waves, particularly around race, class, and the expression of what constitutes the female; and the fourth wave, or the current iteration of feminism, began around 2012, and is distinguished by its use of technology to promote feminist goals. In assessing second-wave feminism’s influence on the field, Deyrup (2014) explains the lack of third-wave research:

'Unlike second wave feminism, which enabled female academic librarians to move into high-level administrative position in the mid- to late- twentieth century, third wave feminism as a movement focuses on inclusiveness and personal choice' (p. 7).

Further, the notion that the feminism of the 1990s and early 2000s is based in humanism, as addressed by Turock (2001) and Kaufman (1994), using McIntosh’s (2019) phases of perception and change in women and leadership, was anticipated as the next stage of feminism in the field; though this approach is appropriate, due to its stance on notions of individuality and the ability to integrate diverse peoples in our communities and workplaces, it belies Harris’ idea of a common agenda, which could provide a much needed unifying force.

The third-wave has an image problem as it came on the heels of radical feminism that benefited from legislation to halt descrimination based upon gender, resulting in the entry of many women into the workforce (Deyrup, 2014; Galbraith, et al., 2019). However, third-wave inclusiveness and personal choice have been the impetus for myriad diversity developments and, in particular, recognition of the homogeneity and exclusionary nature of the field. Explicit feminist analysis of the field, however, remains a significant gap.

Data science: the next hurdle

Harris (1992) also identified technology as a 'highly valued' and 'masculine' area in the field (p. 1). She understood the 'reckless embrace' of technology in the push for professionalism, and the belief that the traditional, male-oriented view of professionals was driving the change towards the term information science within our field (p. 159). Harris cautioned that professionalism in a service-oriented discipline may damage the very essence of the field (p. 20). Whether reckless or not, librarianship (in all of its terminological guises) is firmly enmeshed with technology. Data science is an information aligned field; chosen because it is contemporary and we see it everywhere. We examined data science as a new and emergent field at the nexus of technology and information science, both highly gendered fields.

Feminism and technology

Pritchard’s 1993 work raises important questions vis-à-vis technology through a feminist lens:

Within a given social/historical moment, there are two basic questions that begin to reveal the disparate impact of technologies on women, the disparate access of women to technology, and the perpetuation of hierarchical and patriarchal patterns of power and gender relations. First, whose needs is the technology responding to? Second, to what uses is it being put? (p. 2)

Such questions are no better answered today than thirty years ago. Due to technology’s ubiquity and its ability to shape our lives, there is a growing, urgent need to apply a feminist analysis to this aspect of the field.

Outside information science, analyses of gender in data science have resulted in metatheories of technofeminism and feminist technoscience (Margolis and Fisher, 2002; Åsberg and Lykke, 2010; Breslin and Wadhwa, 2017; D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020), including studies exploring the uneven participation of women in product development, data testing, and research. Though women participate equally in using technology and, in some instances, to a greater extent than men, they are not equal participants in the technological world (Rode, 2011; Rankin and Thomas, 2020; Offenwanger, et al., 2021). As Robertson et al. (2001) suggest, '”masculine” discourses and “hard” skills have dominated within computing for too long and contribute significantly to the declining participation of women within computing’ (p. 11).

Feminist technoscience in information science

Deyrup’s (2014) work offers several observations from a survey of academic library leaders, including that respondents, 'attribute their professional advancement to a mastery of information technology' (p. 7). Responding in 2001 to West’s 1983 assertion that librarians used technology to complete 'housekeeping chores,' Olson suggests that mundanity is perhaps not a bad tool to 'redecorate the masters’ house' and make way for more diversity in the field (pp. 24-25). Floegel and Costello (2021) pick up this subversive thread in asking that we question how our interactions with information are shaped by profitable companies managing access; similarly, Costello and Floegel (2021) suggest that 'striving for equity within structures that were built on oppressive and extractive principles is futile' (p. 1149). This evolution in thought - from being spies in the house of technology to dismantling the oppressive house and building one of our own, an idea made part of our consciousness by Lorde (1984) - reminds us yet again of Harris’ (1992) call for a field of our own. In 1996, Kruger and Kibbee proposed a feminist model for education and activism in information technology. As technology is male-dominated, its design, scholarship, and use is also male-oriented. Noble (2018) explains:

Men, intending to or not, have used their control and monopoly over the domain of technology to further consolidate their social, political, and economic power in society and rarely give up these privileges to create structural shifts in these inheritances. Where men shape technology, they shape it to the exclusion of women [...]. (p. 107).

The issues inherent in the matrix of domination (Hill Collins, 2014), which prizes and rewards the dominant culture and oppresses those outside, are widely reported in technoscience (O’Neil, 2016; D'Ignazio and Klein, 2020; Crawford, 2021). Yet, innovative research by Noble (2018), Floegel and Costello (2021), and Costello and Floegel (2021), offers analysis of the power inherent in information by applying theories from feminist technoscience.

The technocratic imagination

As with library leadership, there has not been a thorough feminist analysis of technology in information science. Mirza and Seale (2017) explain, in their discussion of our technocratic world, that both whiteness and masculinity function as the norm in current solutionism. As such, when Sadler and Bourg (2015) suggest that 'the means of production for the archives of humanity are up for grabs' (para. 26), they invite us to reconsider these technocratic norms. However, as alluded to by Olson (2001), the work of women and people of colour is often invisible within this structure.

What now?

In 1992, Harris outlined many issues affecting women and contributing to the erosion of the field - i.e., tiered education, struggle for status, lack of workplace control and autonomy, insecurity within the academy, image problems, issues with unionisation and association structures, the deskilling of women’s labour and valuing of technology, and the tensions between profit and serving the public good. Examining this list it seems that the field still grapples with these concerns of three decades ago. Although considerations of equity, diversity, and inclusion, have gained attention since the early 1990s, the fulcrum offered in Harris’ work is not fully realised.

The lack of a feminist lens to assess areas such as leadership and technology demonstrate that a full feminist analysis of the field is urgent. Such an analysis must include third-wave ideas of inclusion and diversity and point to ways we might create and push forward an agenda of our own. Information science, as a discipline, locates myriad, valuable theories, but rarely embraces feminist thought. Librarianship, the profession, is necessarily focused on the functional and acute at the cost of lasting change. The rise of big data, the continued male domination of technological and leadership domains, and neoliberal approaches to mandates, structure, and management, do not reflect feminist values and approaches to work; rather, they reflect aspects of the matrix of domination that perpetuate oppression (Costello and Floegel, 2021). As hooks suggested (2003, p. 197), 'dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity.' Interestingly, in a brief Google Scholar citation search, Harris’ work has received less than 100 citations in the past decade, with fewer than 10 using the keyword feminism. Arguably, the field has moved on, alongside changes in theories addressing gender, race, and class in society; but we have not yet completed the important tasks of the third wave in the field and the calls to action Harris explicated. We have moved on and into complication even as our base remains unstable and unresolved.

Moving forward

When we do not see ourselves reflected in all areas of the field or, worse, when the images reflected back at us are oppressive (Noble, 2018), we are not likely to participate. Role models offer aspiring leaders examples of what they could be (Kumaran, Walker, and Wakibi, 2021). If diverse role models and ways of working do not exist, if people across a range of diverse backgrounds do not see themselves represented, the message may become one of unquestioned universalism, where gender and race are not considered (Hines, 2019). Though the fourth wave may be upon us, feminism is evolving. We must heed the lessons of the third wave to consider ways to include difference and diversity in all areas of the field. And, information science researchers must take note of who is still excluded. Until recently, research in the field that does include gender has been extremely binary, in addition to being white. By partnering with and drawing on theorists from areas such as Women and Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and Critical Race Studies, we may find a path forward and ensure that information science fully embraces Harris’s (1992) call.

About the authors

Mary C. Greenshieldsis Teaching and Online Learning Librarian, at the European University Institute, Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini 9, 50014, San Domenico di Fiesole (FI), Italy. She is a PhD student at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and her research interests include feminism, libraries, information practices, technology, and social justice. She can be contacted at mary.greenshields@eui.eu.
Lisa M. Given is Director, Social Change Enabling Capability Platform and a Professor of Information Sciences, at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario and her research interests are in individuals’ information behaviour, web usability and users’ experience of technology, community engagement and societal research impact, qualitative and mixed method research designs, and higher education. She can be contacted at lisa.given2@rmit.edu.au.

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