the workplace in the 90s
Anita Hill
Anita Hill is an educator, lawyer, and author most well-known for her public testimony on the sexual harassment she faced from then Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas.
Hill worked with Thomas at two different venues, the second being when Thomas served as the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1982. After persistent sexual harassment, she left to work at Oral Roberts University.
In July of 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States. After his nomination, rumors about Thomas sexually harassing one of his past employees began to spread, and Hill was eventually subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify.
In October 1991, Hill's testimony was televised to the public. This exposed the three-day event to the American public, showcasing the committee of all white men essentially interrogating Hill as if she were on trial, and all seemingly extremely uncomfortable discussing the sexual details of Thomas's harassment. Hill showed incredible patience, endurance, and strength throughout the hearings.
Despite Hill's testimony, Thomas entirely denied the sexual harassment, calling the whole ordeal a "high-tech lynching." Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court a week later with a vote of 52-48.
While Hill's testimony did not prevent Thomas from being confirmed to the Supreme Court, the hearings had a lasting effect on women across the country. It raised awareness about sexual harassment against women in the workplace, and encouraged women to come forward about their experiences.
Another insane detail from this story is that almost 20 years after Hill's hearings, Clarence Thomas's wife Ginni Thomas left Hill a voicemail, urging her to apologize and explain her reasoning for testifying in the first place.
Joe Biden was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that attacked Anita Hill during her three-day long hearing. In preparation for his 2020 presidential campaign, in 2019 Biden had a phone call with Hill to apologize for his part in the hearing. However, Hill was understandably not satisfied with Biden's weak apology, and felt that his actions during the 1991 hearings had "set the stage" for Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2018, despite Christine Blasey Ford's testimony against him for sexually assaulting her in high school.
1992 -Year of the Woman
After women across the country witnessed Anita Hill being grilled by a committee composed of only white men, women were inspired to run for political office. In 1991, only 2 of 100 senators were women.
After women across the country witnessed Anita Hill being grilled by a committee composed of only white men, women were inspired to run for political office in the 1992 elections. Four new women won Senate seats, and twenty-four women were elected to the House of Representatives, making a total of 54 women in Congress (out of 535 members). California became the first state to be represented by two women senators. These significant (but still low) numbers led to the year of 1992 being coined "The Year of the Woman."
However, throughout the rest of the 1990s, America realized that sexism had not, in fact, been defeated. For example, the Lorena Bobbitt story (which is featured under the "Pop Culture References and Aesthetics" page) revealed that the United States was not ready to face that sexual assault can occur within a marriage.
The workforce continued to be segregated by (binary) gender. As has been the case throughout history, it seemed that women had gone one step forward towards progress, and then subsequently faced several steps back in return.
A Brief History of the Secretary (and Experiences of Sexual Harassment)
Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, secretarial work increasingly became associated exclusively with women. With new forms of automation changing the required skill set of the industry—and because women have historically been paid less than men—women became the majority of secretarial workers by the mid-1900s (especially after World War II).
One of most prestigious secretarial schools, the Katharine Gibbs School, was founded in 1911 by sisters Katharine and Mary Gibbs. The program was intensive and comprehensive; employers competed for graduates of the Katharine Gibbs School to fill their secretarial positions.
In 1942, The National Secretaries Association was formed with the goal of “elevat[ing] the standards of the secretarial profession.” In 1950, organization began granting formal certifications, earned by passing a standardized Certified Professional Secretary (CPS) test. The test concerned both secretarial skills and more subjective markers of behavior and professionalism.
NSA Officers (1954)
Secretary presenting her boss with the NSA "Boss of the Year" Award (1956)
Secretaries receiving their certificates after passing the Certified Professional Secretaries (CPS) exam (1959)
The NSA had several publications for secretaries, and secretaries sometimes also received advice manuals or handbooks. These publications often included advice or discourse on proper dress code, appearance, and behavior. At the Katharine Gibbs School, women learned a variety of skills related to secretarial work but were also instructed on how to be proper women. The office was usually segregated by gender, with women secretaries working under their male bosses. As became a theme throughout the 20th century, performing proper femininity and maintaining one’s appearance became a requirement for being a good secretary. A secretary’s physical appearance was thought to reflect on the status of her employer. A “bad figure” was thought to be reason enough to not be hired as a secretary. And, of course, these beauty norms were meant to adhere to white, heteronormative views of performing proper womanhood.
As Allison Elias puts it in her 2022 book The Rise of Corporate Feminism:
“Secretaries are made, not born.”
While this sentiment may seem to encourage all women that they too could become a secretary with enough dedication and hard work, it also implies that women can and should do anything possible to “improve” their skills, as well as their appearance.
“Great secretaries had to control their emotions, embrace reason, and overcome the feminine tendency to pout or cry in the office environment.”
A 1961 publication from the National Secretaries Association reports a case of a secretary being hired on a six-month probation period in which she was required to lose weight, or else she would be fired.
While Helen Mott and Susan Condor note a decline in a “formal emphasis on ‘grooming” leading up the the 90s, they state that it was “still common for sections of secretarial courses and training manuals to be devoted to issues of bodily management and attractive self-presentation.”
Through the early 1960s, many women viewed working as a secretary as the epitome of becoming a modern working woman. But with a rise of feminist discourse in the 60s, the secretary became the symbol of what feminists were advocating against. The NSA had claimed that it was traditionally feminine traits that made women so good at their secretarial jobs and essential to the office dynamic. Additionally, the NSA made it clear that secretaries and their male bosses had a good working relationship because secretaries were not interested in taking their bosses’ jobs. Some feminists felt that secretaries fulfilled a gendered “work-wife” role, subservient to their (typically) male boss. This was a clear representation of the patriarchy that feminists were critiquing.
Over the coming decades, the NSA and its secretaries would slowly adopt some aspects of feminism to gain incremental improvements and rights in their careers. In 1981, the NSA changed its name to Professional Secretaries International and in 1998 to the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP) (as it still operates today). The organization slowly reinvented itself to include more kinds of office workers, no longer defining itself by the inherently feminine skills it had once prided itself on.
Another factor of working women’s lives in the latter half of the 20th century was the growing attention to sexual harassment. Mott and Condor highlight that women in gender-specific careers, such as secretaries, might be particularly likely to experience sexual harassment in the workplace. Secretaries were especially sexualized, with the boss/secretary dynamic becoming prevalent in porn, for example.
Discourse surrounding sexual harassment was complicated. Women, even women who identified as feminists, were arguing against the “political correctness” of sexual harassment, claiming that these events were simply small, everyday annoyances that women just have to deal with. In fact, despite alarmist fears that women were reporting sexual harassment claims at unprecedented numbers, it appeared that women were to hesitant to call their experiences sexual harassment at all. And the backlash for reporting harassment was sometimes seen as a more traumatic experience than the harassment itself.
In their chapter from the 1997 book Sexual Harassment: Contemporary Feminist Perspectives, Mott and Condor (mentioned previously) conducted a study of 70 female secretaries and their experiences of sexual harassment. While their results indicated a rather low rate of sexual harassment, Mott and Condor call attention to the larger problems that could be contributing to these low numbers. They explain that researchers might incorrectly assume that women are already acutely aware of what the system of patriarchy looks like and how it hurts them, but this is not necessarily the case. Additionally, women might not understand all of the interactions that might qualify as sexual harassment, or these scenarios might happen so often that they do not stand out as memorable occurrences to report. Finally, being perceived as agreeable in the workplace is often perceived as more important to a safe, friendly work environment, rather than facing potential backlash for being a “feminist who can't take a joke.”
Gallery - Working Women
(finalists for 1992 Businesswoman of the Year)
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