TEXT A In 1977, the group Women Office Workers held a contest for secretaries, inviting them to name the " most ridiculous personal errand" they’d ever run. As Lynn Peril tells it in "Swimming in the Steno Pool," her light, wry history of the secretarial profession, the winner was a woman whose boss asked her to take pictures of him before, while and after he shaved off his moustache. The runner-up’s task was to pick up her boss’s wife and newborn baby from the hospital. This is the profession’s image problem: Secretaries have to either cater to their bosses in loopy ways or contend with the idea that they might. Peril, a longtime secretary herself, is frank about how women’s clerical dominance has both helped and hindered them. Her account gives secretaries their due while making clear why they posed a problem for the equal rights movement, and vice versa. In the late 19th century, when women started taking over the field, they were paid half what men were for clerical work -but twice the salary of a public-school teacher, Peril finds. It made some sense, then, when in 1923 an inventor of the typewriter was photographed for a commemorative book with an ensemble of women in Greek gowns and the proud line "EMANCIPATION" on the facing page. The downside was that while men could treat clerical jobs as the first rung of the office management ladder, women almost never made that climb. Instead, they were supposed to settle for reflected glory. One 1960s author told her readers they could "be a lawyer’s or a doctor’s or a scientist’s secretary because you once hoped to be a lawyer or a doctor or a scientist. " Peril notes exceptions. Jane J. Martin, a stenographer turned advertising whiz whose 1921 salary would have come to $ 300, 000 today, sounds like a prototype for the "Mad Men" character Peggy Olson. Katharine Gibbs, a dressmaker turned stenographer, sold her jewelry to raise money, then opened a successful chain of secretarial schools. She accepted only female students, proclaiming, "A woman’s career is blocked by lack of openings, by unjust male competition, by prejudice and, not least, by inadequate salary and recognition. " Still, as Peril writes, it’s a mistake to think of Gibbs as a protofeminist; her school turned out " perfect secretaries in white gloves and hats whose thorough knowledge of shorthand and typing was surpassed only by their loyalty to the boss. " Feminist also isn’t quite the right word for Helen Gurley Brown. She broke the dutiful and chaste mold as she moved up the ranks to become editor of Cosmopolitan. Yet remembering her 1940s days as a secretary at a Los Angeles radio station, she fondly described the "dandy game" of scuttle, in which a group of men picked a secretary to chase and catch so they could take off her underwear. "The girls wore their prettiest panties to work," Brown wrote. "Alas, I was never scuttled. " It’s a story that justifies the most tedious office training on sexual harassment. In the 1970s, second-wave feminists missed chances to appeal to the nine million women who did clerical work. Gloria Steinem apparently didn’t make their feelings her priority when, in her 1971 commencement address at Smith College, she imagined the power of an entire generation of women refusing to learn how to type. When feminists marched for equality in New York, the director of one secretaries’ group declined to participate, declaring, "We’re not exhibitionists, and we don’t carry signs. " Another rejected the idea that secretaries needed other women to liberate them. "We’re perfectly capable of being our own spokesmen," she said, adding, "The truth is, we’re not unhappy. " This rings true. As Peril writes, "not everyone aspired to be an executive. " At the same time, for generations contentment was the only acceptable outlook for women in the office. One guide for secretaries urged them to be "fair and sunny ... no matter how you feel. " The journalist and author Anne Kreamer wants people in the workplace -men and women -to be more comfortable expressing how they feel. In "It’s Always Personal," she asserts that as more women are elevated to positions of power, a greater range of emotions will become acceptable at work. "Is it a real problem that while emotion underlies nearly all important work decisions, most of us most of the time pretend that it’s not so" she asks rhetorically. Kreamer’s book explores how to be true to your "emotional flashpoints -anger, fear, anxiety, empathy, happiness and crying" -without sabotaging your career. You can let your upper lip wobble. But you shouldn’t become the office basket case. To figure out what people actually think about the expression of emotion at work, Kreamer persuaded an advertising agency to help her conduct a nationally representative poll of 700 workers. She found some differences between men and women, especially with regard to tears. In her survey, women were much more likely to report crying at work than men. Yet crying or not crying did not relate to how much respondents liked their jobs or how high they placed in the office hierarchy. This explains how I can love my job but also announce to my boss that since I’m probably going to cry, I’ve brought Kleenex to a meeting. Kreamer is all for Kleenex. She thinks bosses should learn to take crying in stride, though she also warns that if you use tears to manipulate, your concerns "will no longer be heard. " This is all very sensible. Kreamer is less convincing, however, when she tries to lasso brain science into her discussion of gender differences. Largely relying on Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, whose work is studded with exaggerations of brain-based sex differences that fall apart upon closer examination, Kreamer claims not only that women cry more frequently, but that they are "hardwired" to do so. But if this is the case, why do girls and boys cry the same amount through childhood Kreamer doesn’t explore the possibilities. Instead, with flimsy evidence, she proposes that men "may really have a biologically easier time dealing with difficult emotional situations. " She thinks this kind of "scientific insight" will diminish stereotyping. But doesn’t promoting a biological explanation for gender difference, whether or not there’s solid proof for it, make the division seem more immutable than it necessarily is Tellingly, Kreamer found no difference between men and women in a second survey she designed to measure how individual work style lines up with how people cope with stress. From about 1,200 responses, Kreamer charts four types of workplace personalities. Men and women are distributed evenly among the groups, including the "Solvers," who are twice as likely to be top managers. In our era, both men and women have learned to type. Kreamer’s data shows they are equally capable, emotionally speaking, of running the office. If I had a secretary, I’d ask him to file that.
TEXT A
In 1977, the group Women Office Workers held a contest for secretaries, inviting them to name the " most ridiculous personal errand" they’d ever run. As Lynn Peril tells it in "Swimming in the Steno Pool," her light, wry history of the secretarial profession, the winner was a woman whose boss asked her to take pictures of him before, while and after he shaved off his moustache. The runner-up’s task was to pick up her boss’s wife and newborn baby from the hospital.
This is the profession’s image problem: Secretaries have to either cater to their bosses in loopy ways or contend with the idea that they might. Peril, a longtime secretary herself, is frank about how women’s clerical dominance has both helped and hindered them. Her account gives secretaries their due while making clear why they posed a problem for the equal rights movement, and vice versa.
In the late 19th century, when women started taking over the field, they were paid half what men were for clerical work -but twice the salary of a public-school teacher, Peril finds. It made some sense, then, when in 1923 an inventor of the typewriter was photographed for a commemorative book with an ensemble of women in Greek gowns and the proud line "EMANCIPATION" on the facing page. The downside was that while men could treat clerical jobs as the first rung of the office management ladder, women almost never made that climb. Instead, they were supposed to settle for reflected glory. One 1960s author told her readers they could "be a lawyer’s or a doctor’s or a scientist’s secretary because you once hoped to be a lawyer or a doctor or a scientist. "
Peril notes exceptions. Jane J. Martin, a stenographer turned advertising whiz whose 1921 salary would have come to $ 300, 000 today, sounds like a prototype for the "Mad Men" character Peggy Olson. Katharine Gibbs, a dressmaker turned stenographer, sold her jewelry to raise money, then opened a successful chain of secretarial schools. She accepted only female students, proclaiming, "A woman’s career is blocked by lack of openings, by unjust male competition, by prejudice and, not least, by inadequate salary and recognition. "
Still, as Peril writes, it’s a mistake to think of Gibbs as a protofeminist; her school turned out " perfect secretaries in white gloves and hats whose thorough knowledge of shorthand and typing was surpassed only by their loyalty to the boss. " Feminist also isn’t quite the right word for Helen Gurley Brown. She broke the dutiful and chaste mold as she moved up the ranks to become editor of Cosmopolitan. Yet remembering her 1940s days as a secretary at a Los Angeles radio station, she fondly described the "dandy game" of scuttle, in which a group of men picked a secretary to chase and catch so they could take off her underwear. "The girls wore their prettiest panties to work," Brown wrote. "Alas, I was never scuttled. " It’s a story that justifies the most tedious office training on sexual harassment.
In the 1970s, second-wave feminists missed chances to appeal to the nine million women who did clerical work. Gloria Steinem apparently didn’t make their feelings her priority when, in her 1971 commencement address at Smith College, she imagined the power of an entire generation of women refusing to learn how to type. When feminists marched for equality in New York, the director of one secretaries’ group declined to participate, declaring, "We’re not exhibitionists, and we don’t carry signs. " Another rejected the idea that secretaries needed other women to liberate them. "We’re perfectly capable of being our own spokesmen," she said, adding, "The truth is, we’re not unhappy. "
This rings true. As Peril writes, "not everyone aspired to be an executive. " At the same time, for generations contentment was the only acceptable outlook for women in the office. One guide for secretaries urged them to be "fair and sunny ... no matter how you feel. "
The journalist and author Anne Kreamer wants people in the workplace -men and women -to be more comfortable expressing how they feel. In "It’s Always Personal," she asserts that as more women are elevated to positions of power, a greater range of emotions will become acceptable at work. "Is it a real problem that while emotion underlies nearly all important work decisions, most of us most of the time pretend that it’s not so" she asks rhetorically. Kreamer’s book explores how to be true to your "emotional flashpoints -anger, fear, anxiety, empathy, happiness and crying" -without sabotaging your career. You can let your upper lip wobble. But you shouldn’t become the office basket case.
To figure out what people actually think about the expression of emotion at work, Kreamer persuaded an advertising agency to help her conduct a nationally representative poll of 700 workers. She found some differences between men and women, especially with regard to tears. In her survey, women were much more likely to report crying at work than men. Yet crying or not crying did not relate to how much respondents liked their jobs or how high they placed in the office hierarchy.
This explains how I can love my job but also announce to my boss that since I’m probably going to cry, I’ve brought Kleenex to a meeting. Kreamer is all for Kleenex. She thinks bosses should learn to take crying in stride, though she also warns that if you use tears to manipulate, your concerns "will no longer be heard. "
This is all very sensible. Kreamer is less convincing, however, when she tries to lasso brain science into her discussion of gender differences. Largely relying on Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, whose work is studded with exaggerations of brain-based sex differences that fall apart upon closer examination, Kreamer claims not only that women cry more frequently, but that they are "hardwired" to do so. But if this is the case, why do girls and boys cry the same amount through childhood Kreamer doesn’t explore the possibilities. Instead, with flimsy evidence, she proposes that men "may really have a biologically easier time dealing with difficult emotional situations. " She thinks this kind of "scientific insight" will diminish stereotyping. But doesn’t promoting a biological explanation for gender difference, whether or not there’s solid proof for it, make the division seem more immutable than it necessarily is
Tellingly, Kreamer found no difference between men and women in a second survey she designed to measure how individual work style lines up with how people cope with stress. From about 1,200 responses, Kreamer charts four types of workplace personalities. Men and women are distributed evenly among the groups, including the "Solvers," who are twice as likely to be top managers. In our era, both men and women have learned to type. Kreamer’s data shows they are equally capable, emotionally speaking, of running the office. If I had a secretary, I’d ask him to file that.
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