Women: The Missing Trend in AAM's TrendsWatch

Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash, Courtesy of AAM, TrendsWatch

A year ago when there was no pandemic, women made up 50.1 percent of the museum workforce. They were registrars, educators, part-time interpreters, security guards, conservators, curators and directors. They went to work. They cared for children, partners, and elderly parents. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, White women made 78.4 cents for every dollar a white man makes. For women of color, particularly those with hourly or part-time positions, the picture is bleaker. If they are Black, they make 61.4 cents for every dollar made by white men, and if they are Latinx, the ratio is worse: They make 56 cents on the white man's dollar. Those discrepancies also exist in the museum world, but for many it was work in a field they had worked hard to enter. And a year ago, although the museum world didn't close its gender pay gap--in fact, it didn't even talk about it--it felt as though the field might be undergoing a sea change. Among the announcements of new hires, more and more faces were women of color. But then in March 2020, COVID arrived, and the world started closing down.

You've probably read all this before, and truthfully, while the museum world's gender pay gap is an ongoing problem, this post isn't about the pay gap. It's actually about AAM's newly-released TrendsWatch, Navigating an Uncertain Future. As a founding member of Gender Equity in Museums, I frequently look at TrendsWatch, hoping for an acknowledgement, a nod, a tip of the hat, to women's roles in museums present and future. This year, I hoped TrendsWatch would acknowledge the very particular way museum women have been harmed by COVID, and what that might mean as we look ahead. Women, work and COVID has, in fact, been the subject of reports by the Center for American Progress, the Brookings Institution and McKinsey so it wasn't a stretch to think Elizabeth Merritt, the report's author, might focus on women, particularly since 2020 marked the centenary of women's suffrage.

The report's opening section, titled "Closing the Gap," seemed the place women's issues over the last 12 months might come to the fore. But they aren't there. This is not to say that issues of wealth inequality-- "Closing the Gap's" focus-- aren't important. They are, but it's odd women as a group aren't mentioned. If we believe the folks at McKinsey, women's jobs are 1.8 times more vulnerable than men's jobs in this crisis. In fact, women make up 39-percent of global employment but account for 54-percent of overall job losses. And if we listen to the Brookings Institution, it tells us "that 46-percent of working women worked in jobs paying low wages, with median earnings of only $10.93 per hour. The share of workers earning low wages is higher among Black women (54%) and Hispanic or Latina women (64%) then among white women (40%), reflecting the structural racism that has limited options in education, housing, and employment for people of color."

A quick look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveals that the median hourly pay for museum workers nationwide is $23.97, meaning that half the field's workers earn less than that amount. And we already know that systemic racism coupled with classism and pigmentocracy, undergirds our pay structure. Poor pay, no benefits, and no childcare result in women staying home. Who else is going to be the primary caregiver? According to the Center for American Progress not only did many women lose their jobs during this crisis, many stopped working because schools and day cares closed. Its report quotes a Washington Post article that one in four women lost jobs because of a lack of childcare, twice the rate among men. And the news keeps coming. This morning, for example, NBC News reports that 275,000 women left the workforce in January alone, continuing a trend that began last February. Surely the museum world has also been affected by this exodus that economists term a critical pandemic trend.

If you look at the BLS figures from 2018, White women were 82.4-percent of the museum workforce, Black women, 10.3-percent, Asian 3.6, and Latinx 9.6. The change is subtle, but it's there. BLS reports that in 2020 the museum world is now 82.2-percent White, but 7.5-percent Black, 9.3-percent Latinx, while the Asian number remains unchanged. It will probably be several years before the full extent of this crisis is evident, but clearly the hope that the field is becoming more diverse isn't reflected in BLS's figures yet.

Then there is the part that doesn't necessarily show up in the data: the workload has grown for working parents, but particularly working mothers. One report by the Boston Consulting Group found that parents spent 27 additional hours each week on household tasks, childcare, and homeschooling, and half of them felt their work performance decreased as a result. In 1972, a group of white museum women formed something called the Women's Caucus. They appeared at AAM's annual meetings in 1972. In 1973, they presented a platform, asking for equitable wages, a chance at leadership, paid family leave and childcare. In the intervening 40 years, museum women have changed. We are more diverse--not diverse enough by a long shot-- but more diverse. And many women now hold leadership positions. Yet in a Ground Hog Day loop, much of what that original caucus wanted and needed remains unaddressed. That's where Gender Equity in Museums (GEMM) comes in. GEMM is a coalition of individuals and organizations committed to raising awareness, affecting change, and championing transparency about intersectional gender equity in the museum workplace.

One of the important characteristics of Merritt's report is that for each problem, she describes the challenges, summarizes museum responses, and presents a framework for action. I want to underscore again, that there is a great deal of thoughtful advice, important examples, and additional resources in TrendsWatch, but speaking for GEMM's 1,500 Facebook friends, there is a missing framework: Women. All women. So here are some possible questions.

Critical Questions for Museums:

1. Have you created an organizational culture acknowledging the ways gender and race are inextricably intwined?

2. Does your museum have--as McKinsey terms it--"a bias for action?"

3. Have your discussions around DEI solidified a commitment to equity on all fronts, including gender?

Internal Operations:

1. Have you completed an equity audit of your institutional salaries?

2. Have you reviewed your human resource policies and procedures to reveal and address discriminating behavior?

3. Are you confident, that an employee with a problem or a grievance can navigate your organization, and be treated equitably and fairly?

4. Do you offer sexual harassment training along with DEI training in your workplace? And is your organization clear on its definition of sexual harassment, and how such cases are handled?

External Operations:

1. Does your organization post its values statement so visitors, donors, tradespeople, trustees and staff know where it stands on issues of DEI and specifically gender equity?

2. Does your organization list salaries when posting positions? Within the institution, are your salary levels transparent?

3. Does your museum offer equitable professional opportunities and mentoring?

4. Does your museum have a policy on employee participation in public protest for gender equity and other forms of social justice?

The museum field has a lot of work ahead of it, shedding a patriarchal, hierarchical past, becoming more diverse in ways that are systemic and not tokenism, and frankly, in becoming kinder institutions, committed to staff well-being and development. In the past year we've watched as notable museums were revealed as horrific towards women. The field is committed to diversity. Yet why should women of color join a field where the gender pay gap is the unacknowledged elephant in the room? And what happens when they find themselves employed by institutions where sexual harassment and workplace bullying are the norm? And how are all women balancing the increased tasks at home from COVID versus their commitments at work? How is this narrative and the voices of some 20,000-plus women not a trend to watch, and more importantly, a wrong to right?

If you are committed to intersectional gender equity in the museum workplace, join GEMM. Let's make GEMM a trend to watch.

Joan Baldwin