Marking Gender: A Critical Analysis of Gender Representation in Library of Congress Subject Headings

Abstract

Although the problem of bias, prejudice, and marginalization has long been a subject of critical
reflection and inquiry in library knowledge organization systems, recent years have seen a dramatic
surge in initiatives to address such longstanding issues. Those efforts have been inspired, in many ways,
by the public controversy over “illegal aliens” and related terms in Library of Congress Subject Headings
(LCSH), as well as the groundswell of racial reckoning across the United States in 2020. However,
these recent developments should not overshadow a history of critiques of cataloging practices shaped
by the widely used systems and tools maintained by the Library of Congress and other standards
organizations.1 One of the foremost critics is Sanford Berman, who famously criticized LCSH for its
normative representations of Euro-centric, white Christian, capitalist worldviews marked by racism,
patriarchal authority, and