Librarians Push for Pay Data in Job Postings

"The bulk of the more than 10,000 librarians attending the midwinter conference of the American Library Association in Philadelphia over the past four days have packed up and gone home. But some committed ALA members were still around this morning. About half a dozen of them—on the Committee on Status of Women in Librarianship—gathered to discuss gender-equity and other issues affecting librarians. One issue the librarians discussed was pay. They want the ALA to allow job advertisements in the group’s American Libraries magazine and other publications only if the postings include minimum and maximum pay offered. The librarians said it’s difficult for their colleagues to negotiate with employers for higher salaries without this information.


But many employers, particularly academic institutions, refuse to include this information in their job postings. Some of the librarians said the ALA is reluctant to force colleges to include salary ranges for fear they will pull their ads, thus reducing the library association’s advertising revenue. The women’s group wants to push the ALA’s governing body, though, not to [be] cowed by higher-education institutions on this issue.


The women’s group also is concerned that speakers at ALA conferences are more often men than women. The group wants to gather data for the past several years on the gender of conference speakers and see if its suspicion is true." —Andrea L. Foster

Source:
The Chronicle