The Rise of Corporate Feminism : Women in the American Office, 1960–1990

From the 1960s through the 1990s, the most common job for women in the United States was clerical work. Even as college-educated women obtained greater opportunities for career advancement, occupational segregation by gender remained entrenched. How did feminism in corporate America come to represent the individual success of the executive woman and not the collective success of the secretary? Allison Elias argues that feminist goals of advancing equal opportunity and promoting meritocracy unintentionally undercut the status and prospects of so-called "pink-collar" workers. In the 1960s, ideas about sex equality spurred some clerical workers to organize, demanding "raises and respect," while others pushed for professionalization through credentialing. This cross-class alliance pushed a feminist agenda that included unionizing some clerical workers and advancing others who had college degrees into management. But these efforts diverged in the 1980s, when corporations adopted measures to move qualified women into their upper ranks. By the 1990s, corporate support for professional women resulted in an individualistic feminism that focused on the needs of those at the top. Meanwhile, as many white, college-educated women advanced up the corporate ladder, clerical work became a job for lower-socioeconomic-status women of all races. The Rise of Corporate Feminism considers changes in the workplace surrounding affirmative action, human resource management, automation, and unionization by groups such as 9to5. At the intersection of history, gender, and management studies, this book spotlights the secretaries, clerks, receptionists, typists, and bookkeepers whose career trajectories remained remarkably similar despite sweeping social and legal change. "From Lean In to the continuing fight for equal pay, issues about women in the workplace are fiercely debated and championed. In The Rise of Corporate Feminism, Allison Elias recovers the historical origins of this debate by exploring the contested meaning of feminism for working women in corporations from the 1960s to the 1990s. By the 1960s, two visions of advancing women's status in the modern corporation were emerging. One sought to give individual women personal fulfillment by granting them the opportunity to compete for power, money, and status alongside men. The other aimed to use collective action to increase the social and economic value of traditionally female jobs, such as clerical or secretarial occupations. This book examines the divergence between these two conceptions of feminism and how they embody opposing notions of fairness, equity, and progress. Elias argues that the worldview that supported women's ambitions to become corporate leaders undermined the movement to improve women's status as laborers. Individualistic competition-not collaborative activism-became the means for women to achieve upward mobility in corporations. Elias analyzes the history of organizations like 9to5 and the National Association of Working Women, which sought to organize pink-collar clerical workers, and the rise of the first female managers in the 1980s. The book views these histories in the context of new laws regarding the workplace, larger changes in the workplace and the corporate world, including automation, which undercut the bargaining power of clerical workers; affirmative action; the rise of multinationals and deregulation. The book concludes with an analysis of the legacies of this history and the continuing challenges for both clerical and professional women"-- Provided by publisher INTRODUCTION -- Feminist OR Secretary? -- At the Intersection of Sex Equality and Economic Justice -- The Promise and Perils of Human Resource Management -- Beyond Affirmative Action's Reach -- The Decline of the Office Wife and the Rise of the "Automated Harem" -- Could Pink-Collar Workers "Save the Labor Movement"? -- Feminism as Occupational Choice -- EPILOGUE