Introduction

Women in the Museum explores the professional lives of the field's female workforce, a cohort that grew exponentially from the late nineteenth century to the present. It chronicles the challenges working women in the museum field face today, as well as their responses to widespread entrenched and unconscious gender bias. For museums working toward long-term sustainability, gender equity and inclusion must be part of the equation. If museums want to be acknowledged as havens of civic intersection and tolerance, they must first treat their workers and volunteers with the same respect they treat their visitors. The authors believe museums create communities. Those communities include women as subjects of collections, exhibits and programming, women as audience members and supporters, and as employees. With today's museum studies graduate programs dominated by women, in a decade the field could join nursing, social work, and libraries as a solidly pink-collar profession.