The Woman Category
Palmer and Malone examine representations of women in classification structures, which are “artifacts of a society’s intellectual history” that “reveal commonly held beliefs and assumptions” (179). They show how subject headings can be temporary in nature and can depend upon and influence relationships between published knowledge and organization and retrieval of that knowledge. They trace the history and evolution of the heading, “Woman,” which we now know as “Women,” by looking to the Cumulative Bibliographic Index and the United States Catalog from 1902-1975, and they discuss current issues regarding the heading in syndetic structures. Categories in an organizational structure can differentiate by creating distinct classes, and the structure will dedifferentiate by fostering convergence of categories. Subdivisions and cross-references are ways to enable convergence, and their use also indicates “the acceptance and growing status of an idea or concept” (181).
The primary concern in this article is with the problem of cross referencing works on women and specific topics, and they found that “cross-references did not consistently connect books listed in the Woman section to the general body of literature on a topic” (187). For instance, The Sexes in Science and History (1916), by Eliza Burt Gamble, was listed under “Woman,” but not “History” or “Science”—not even “Science—Social Aspects” or “Science and Civilization,” and not under “Man,” “Sex,” or “Men.” They claim that the lack of a referral to “Woman” from “History” or “Science” would lead one to infer that women have no place in these fields. They do, however, point out segregating features of the headings for women and the “conceptualization of a world where male is normative” (189). They cite Denise Riley, who states that an overassertion of the category “Woman” serves to amplify its apparent remoteness from humanity. They also discuss Sandy Berman’s push for changing “Women as Chemists” to “Women Chemists,” and in an endnote state that they view this as “only marginally less sexist than the earlier Women as constructions,” that it is assumed that a chemist is male unless it is marked otherwise, but without such a division it would be difficult to find the books about women chemists (192).
By tracing the use of the heading, the authors found “no consistent composite notion of woman emerging over time” (190). Among reasons for changes were the following: accretion of decisions about “aboutness”; use of “see also” references based on a “sense of how a reader might search for information”; standardization of headings; range of topics—resulting from public interest and publishers’ judgments. By simply looking at subject headings in a bibliography, the authors noticed “surges and declines in political, social, and cultural themes embodied in the texts” (190). And they found that practices of differentiation and categorization seem to have become accepted as natural, rather than constructions, and continue to be used today. They cite examples of poor cross-listing in internet directories, despite the great potential offered by hyperlinks.
Palmer, C. & Malone, C. (2001). Elaborate isolation: Metastructures of knowledge about women. The Information Society, 17, 179-194.
