Feminine and Feminist Organizations

Unlike other feminized professions, academic librarianship functions relatively autonomously within its parent bureaucracy. Therefore, academic libraries offer a unique model of workplace gendering and feminism. This qualitative, ethnographic study explores issues of feminism and gender in three academic libraries, each in a different region of the United States. Feminist challenges to bureaucracy emerged in the areas of hierarchy, division of labor, competition and collaboration, decision-making, and communication. Feminine practice in the libraries reflected private sphere attitudes toward work (including values of community, emotionality, and caring). Giving voice to feminine and feminist practice previously unexplored in conventional workplaces, this book provides new models for management and organizational theory.