I was intrigued by Susan Reed's description of the university museum in
which she works, and have a question (well, several questions) for her --
and anyone else who thinks about these things:

- Has the museum always had more women than men, and for how long has a
woman been director?
 - Do you perceive that this tolerant (to women's lives) organization has
become so and/or remains so because of the director or the staff?
- In an environment where the new right is clawing back progress made by
women, is there any perceived pressure on the museum to reduce these
"privileges" -- i.e., is it harder to maintain what you have achieved, are
you stable, or are you making further progress?

The reason for my nosiness is that I'm launching into my own doctoral
research which looks at how organizational stability supports reforms
sought by individuals.  I too work in a university museum, also roughly (I
say roughly because as a university museum we have a number of joint
faculty appointments) 18 staff members -- of whom 4 are men (including the
director), and full of volunteers (virtually all women) and students
(mostly women).  I'm drawing some of my thinking about internal reform
from a recent article by Debra Meyerson and Maureen Scully called
"Tempered Radicalism and the Politics of Ambivalence and Change" in which
they explore how people make change from inside the system.

Kersti Krug
Museum of Anthropology
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada

On Tue, 14 Nov 1995, sureed wrote:
> I've been following this thread for awhile and thought you might be
> interested in the staff at our museum. We are one of the mid-size
> university museums and have a full-time staff (excluding guards) of 18
> people. Of those 20, 13 are women, including our director. All of our
> curators are women, except the education curator who is the only male on
> the third floor; our two conservators, our director of operations, and all
> three registrars are women; while the photographers, graphic artist, exhibits
> preparator and the workshop guys are men. All of the part-time support
> staff are women as well. Coming from a museum that is staffed mainly by
> women has definite advantages in leadership and working place attitudes.
> Motherhood/womanhood is a lot easier in this environment - everyone
> understands if your child is ill and you need to be home with him -
> hence, with the compassion extended by other females, a support system is in
> place, and work becomes more productive and less stressful, loyalty
> increases and a higher quality of professionalism ensues.
>
> Susan Reed
> Indiana University Art Museum