The Current State of Female Representation in Library Leadership: A Comprehensive Analysis of Over 13,000 Open U.S. Libraries by Library Type, Collection Size, and State

Abstract

Women are still underrepresented in library leadership. Previous research has focused on academic libraries, with samples of <1000 libraries. This is the first study to analyze >13,000 U.S. libraries while considering differences by state, type, and collection size. Women are underrepresented in leadership by 8.2 percentage points (pp) at academic libraries, 5.5 pp at special libraries, 10.7 pp at school libraries, and 14.7 pp at government libraries. This corresponds to a male being 28.6%–185.5% more likely to be director. At public libraries, women are overrepresented by 2.6 pp, but their director percentage decreases exponentially with collection size.

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