The Challenges of Balancing work and home obligations
Rachel Singer Gordon has chimed in with her thoughts on the gender imbalance in system librarianship issue. She makes some terrific points that I failed to mention. I think Rachel is very right when she says there are many factors as to why there seems to be lack of women in library tech. Techie women being spread too thin is one factor she points out. Sometimes this comes from domestic responsibilites. When I think about the possibility of having a family I’m somewhat daunted by the fact that I’m the Head of Web Services. This means a number of things like the fact that I carry a cell phone 24/7 for work purposes. Granted I’m not the server guy and I don’t get a ton of calls but there is an “always on” expectation. Plus, there is the expectation when you work in the tech sector that you will stay until the job is done. This doesn’t play nice with domestic obligations.
Early in my career I completely blew this issue off. My husband was a grad student and for the most part, he took care of domestic stuff. In the last year, my circumstances have changed and I have developed a greater appreciation for the women I work with who have kids and my own mother. (Mom how the heck did you pull it off?) Much of this change of worldview is a result of owning a house, my husband having a full time job, and carrying a much larger piece of the domestic load. I’m grateful that I’m not starting my career at this time because I have fewer spare moments to write/read and do professional development. At the same time I worry that my career is plateauing because I need to make different choices about my time. I also worry about the other women in Systems trying to balance the responsibilities of career (day to day work stuff, as well as professional development) and home. This isn’t a phenomena unique to librarianship or systems librarianship. However, I can’t help wondering if it is a piece to the puzzle of why I don’t know more women involved in systems librarianship.
This is a piece to the puzzle of why so many of us get out into the field, take the first job we get, and stay there. By my training I should be doing tech stuff, library web sites, pushing access to libraries digitally. However, what I am doing is spending my first year out of school trying to keep up with the expectations of being a children’s librarian in a public library where I am too busy to get my weekly storytime planned effectively before it’s time to perform it. I see lots of good journal articles come and go across my desk (months after they were published) and have to pass them on without doing the reading I so desperately need to do to keep up even with general trends, much less tech trends. Add to that the soccer practice and homework for my son, and everyone gets shortchanged, my career most of all. And I want to move to an academic library? How? When? With what time? Ladies, what can we do to make this work in an era where those who can devote 60 hours a week to work are the only ones who can keep up? I know that a lot of librarians are getting ready to retire, but a lot of us “new to the field” librarians are mid-career and have established families already. It was enough of a struggle to get through library school while balancing work and home life, now to find out that every spare minute out of work must be spent on work stuff, just to stay current? No thanks. This is not why I went to library school. I’m not whining, just looking for solutions to a problem where I know I’m not the only one suffering….Ideas anyone?
When I started reading this thread of related posts, I thought I had something to contribute..but when it comes right down to it, I’m just another ‘statistic’ about women in tech and specifically women in tech at libraries. Working in a smaller public library (serving 12,500) in a very remote and rural setting, I used to feel that being one of few women in the field was actually a great perk. I often had to deal with men who felt above me, but after a few minutes of conversation, I always managed to gain their respect, and therefore enjoyed a sort of celebrity in and around my community. Now, I find myself very alone with much more responsibility…from being a circulation librarian to the network administrator, to being both the network and system administrator, and now as director, I have all of the financial and management burden, and still must play the role of system/network administrator. The celebrity status now is unwelcome, because I find I do not have enough time or resources to complete any of my duties to MY satisfaction (though everyone else seems happy with it). 60 to 80 hour work weeks are growing old, and I cannot think of a single woman to emulate or learn better work habits from. Add to this the little fact that I’m married with 6 daughters (4 of them teenagers), and I often find myself wondering how much longer I can really do this. Like Joy, I’m always on call, and it becomes a burden even if the phone doesn’t ring…just knowing that you’re never fully ‘away’ from work. How many of us are being forced into having to choose between family and work because there isn’t anyone that understands one simple fact:
no matter how much has changed, most women still have ‘typical’ domestic duties….
I will have to choose my family over my library. And what a sad day that will be… for everyone.