You’ll never hear me deny that women have made significant strides toward equality in the past sixty years. Since the 1950s, women have challenged gender norms in their homes, their communities, and their workplaces.
Linda Hirshman (from our course reading) and other feminists have emphasized the importance of women in the workplace. Hirshman especially disapproves of women “opting out” of the workforce to take care of her children, partly because she believes constantly spending time with the kids isn’t intellectually challenging or completely fulfilling.
Hirshman has a point; a meaningful career does make use of a woman’s sense of reason, and Aristotle once put forth that this was the greatest source of happiness for humans. But what about a meaningless career? A HuffPost article published in February 2013 pointed out that the most common occupation for a woman today is a secretary—the very same job that held the top spot in 1950. Google Image searches of the words “1950s secretary” and “secretary” (see below) will plainly reveal the overwhelmingly feminine nature of this career, as all of the actual office secretaries that appear are women. Every last one.
Why is this alarming? Let’s consider the HuffPost article’s figure from the U.S. Census:
“Between 2006 and 2010, about 4 million people in the United States worked as ‘secretaries [a la the unhappy Pam from early seasons of The Office] and administrative assistants [a la Anne Hathaway’s humiliating career in The Devil Wears Prada]’ and 96 percent of them were women.”
These secretaries are transferring calls and making copies, while the administrative assistants may fetch a coffee for someone more important (though the article suggests that the different job title gives an AA more clout, I think we can learn from A-Hathaway). I don’t say this to degrade these working women. I say it to emphasize the lack of reasoning/human satisfaction associated with their profession. And if there are so many women in this profession, are our ideas of women’s progress misguided?
Given our class discussions on how few women there are in Congress and CEO positions, and after assessing how many are working in relatively powerless and meaningless professions (by Aristotle’s reasoning standard), I don’t think the numbers are telling the whole story. While I recognize that women have made considerable progress in the past sixty-some years, I don’t think it’s safe to say that the large influx of females into the workforce necessarily means happier lives for said females. And isn’t that the whole point?
I don’t believe that encouraging women to opt out of working and stay home is the answer, but it seems that some of today’s feminist discourse (such as that of Hirshman) is less than helpful. In my opinion, women should be striving to enter meaningful professions; they shouldn’t simply try to get into the workforce by any means necessary and take a purposeless job that offers no possibility for advancement. This is only feminist progress in numbers, not in results.
While this (regrettably) only applies to women who are financially secure enough to refuse undesirable work, it may be a good place to start.
I was a bit triggered by the sentence "I say it to emphasize the lack of reasoning/human satisfaction associated with their profession." In my experience, the secretaries, administrative assistants, executive assistants and receptionists are the most personable and often the front face of the office. They are the primary representation of their colleagues and the organization as a whole. They are the ones who set up appointments, take minutes at meetings, greet visitors, etc. While I agree that women should be in higher positions as well, I feel that it can be problematic to belittle some women for their choices. I would also note that the majority of administrative positions require an associates degree or less, so keep in mind that many of these workers are not educationally qualified to hold executive positions.
ReplyDeleteBesides the disagreement about the nature of administrative work, I feel that this was a really important theme to this post. Yes, women are entering the workforce in greater numbers, but is that enough? Should we be looking more closely at that statistic, taking into account what types of women are performing what jobs? What chances are there for improvement, what position are they most likely to fill, what identities do these women face? There is a lot to ponder.
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DeleteI understand where you're coming from with this, Noelle. I suppose it would probably depend on each individual office, but it seems that many women (especially in mainstream media, like Pam from The Office and Anne Hathaway in TDWP) are dissatisfied with these jobs.
DeleteI don't mean to belittle any woman who chooses this path or who is not qualified to move up the ladder, of course. I felt it was important, though, to draw attention to the women who assume the job is a springboard and get stuck. I suppose it would have been helpful for me to mention another point in the article, which said that more women than men currently hold graduate degrees. The trend I discuss in this post doesn't seem to reflect this enormous increase in educated women, so I have to assume that for many women, it isn't a choice.
Thank you for your feedback! I hope my reply helped to clear up the intention of my post.
Your post reminded me of our discussion of unemployment/underemployment when we talked about the net farm payroll. In our discussion in previous weeks we agreed that yes, there are more jobs in the economy, but what does the quality of these say? I think the same thing is being said here. More women are in the workplace since the 1950's, but the quality of those jobs is suffering. I personally think that this country is going through a slow transition: we're going from women completely absent from universities, the workplace and the government, and now they're filling in the gaps. Universities are almost half and half, but like Hirschman pointed out, an overwhelming minority of the women from elite universities and rigorous academic programs aren't going to the workplace. Perhaps all we need is time and we'll see the women in universities, in all parts of the country, start to spill over in the workplace and gradually match up to the number of men in the professional workplace just as it has happened with higher education.
ReplyDeleteIn light of Noelle's comment above, I definitely want to emphasize first that secretaries and administrative assistants undoubtedly have important roles in the workplace and I think that job satisfaction depends on a person's/woman's own professional wants and interests.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the fact that this kind of work is not very evenly split between genders is troubling. Even though these jobs can provide satisfaction to women, I think that maybe what Kim was getting at and what I think is that they are not as authoritative as other jobs (lawyers, politicians, researchers, etc.) that have power in shaping policy and society. In my experience, secretarial or administrative positions do not have much say in the workplace and that this lack of voice is still a huge problem.
Similarly, the nature of the work typically involves serving others - you are reporting to those above you and performing tasks they need so they can do their work, greeting others in a friendly way, and so on. This seems to play into some harmful gender stereotypes, sending the message that not only are women better as these tasks, but it is the #1 job they hold (and the #1 position they're good at). All in all, I think this gender disparity reflects gender stereotypes and inequalities in the workforce that continue to be problematic.
I also support Noelle's point of corporate America, let alone the general public having this negative view upon secretaries. While, yes I agree with your statement, Kim, about women still trailing behind in terms of CEO positions and whatnot, but rather I don't think the media/The Office/Anne Hathaway justifies the "secretary" position - I've worked with numerous women who happy in their position. They did not quite want the high stress life of a managerial position as well.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't necessarily agree with the Google Image comparison of secretaries. While I do like the concept of it, I could easily turn around and ask readers to Google "janitors" and see what it comes up with (it's pretty much all men). Do you consider that a meaningless career?
By the "use of reason" standards, I do consider being a janitor a meaningless career and I do primarily think of men when I picture someone fulfilling that job, so I see your point. However, the central idea behind googling secretary was the fact that it is the number one job among women - not simply one that is more gendered toward them. The comparison between the 1950s and today was really what led me to include those images in my post; the secretary was the quintessential job for a woman right as women entered the workplace and it still seems to be to some extent.
DeleteSome women may be happy in this job, but it seems like underemployment to me (especially considering that more women than men are earning graduate degrees than men). Personally, if I'd spent money on undergraduate or graduate level education, I wouldn't be happy with a job as a secretary (and many places won't hire a secretary without a college degree).
Also, we have to account for the fact that many of the women who claim they don't want the high stress that comes with a managerial position have been socialized to value work-life balance more than men, as they feel responsible for some breadwinning and taking care of children. Just something to consider...