“We just need to talk about it continually” : School librarians’ thoughts on gender norms and gender identities

This thesis aims to examine school librarians’ work with gender roles and gender norms in a single municipality in Sweden. The two main focuses of the study are the use of pronouns when speaking to and about the students, and the work with the selection of books concerning gender in the physical library.Five school librarians were interviewed using a semi-structured method. The interviews lasted between 30 and 50 minutes and took place at the librarians’ respective schools.The theoretical base comes from queer theory in general and Karin Salmson’s ideas in particular. Salmson uses two concepts called norm criticism and norm creativity, which this thesis leans on. Norm criticism is explained as seeing a repressed group and working to include them in the normative group, while norm creativity is seeing beyond norms as a whole and only seeing the individuals.The conclusion of the study is that the school librarians do consider gender norms in their day to day work and that they consider it an important part of their profession. It also shows, however, that their ways of implementing this work varies depending on the state of their schools and their own personal backgrounds. One librarian might work to include girls and nonbinary students in a male dominated environment (norm criticism), while another’s main concern is not to focus on the students’ genders at all (norm creativity)