The 2,000,000 U.S. secretaries —nearly all women, many underutilized and underpaid—would seem to be ideal recruits for Women's Liberation. Yet few so far have joined the cause. Nevertheless, with new pages being turned almost everywhere else, some are being flipped over in shorthand notebooks too.
Last week, responding to complaints from employees, the U.S. State Department ordered its executives to stop treating secretaries as "char help," to show a little more diplomacy toward them and to encourage independent secretarial decision making. Officials warned especially against the "reliable-old-shoe syndrome," in which secretaries are assumed to be content with the same duties throughout their career while almost everyone else moves up.
Hot-Pants Party. This week a group of New York City secretaries, backed by members of the National Organization of Women, plans to picket the headquarters of Olivetti Corp., which is running ads that infuriate feminists. The ads promote "brainy" typewriters that are supposed to eliminate some typing errors made by dippy-looking secretaries, who presumably lack the brains to avoid them in the first place. In the TV commercial, the secretary is shown as a vacuous sex kitten who finds that she can attract men by becoming "an Olivetti girl."
More and more secretaries, like airline stewardesses, are rebelling against being viewed as objects of vicarious sexual pleasure (or being called "dear" and "honey" by men in the office). Linda Lervold, a secretary at a Manhattan ad agency, complains about an office "hotpants party" at which women employees were invited to "show their wares." A N.O.W. member, Miss Lervold attended wearing distinctly unsexy culottes and gave the host, a vice president, a pair of men's hot pants, don't think anybody at the party got the point," she laments.
Secretaries commonly complain that they are not challenged to stretch their minds or take initiative, and get little recognition when they do. "A secretary works hard at putting it all together, but the credit often goes to the boss," says a top secretary at a major New York-based pharmaceutical firm. Another almost universal gripe: being asked to serve as the office "go fer," who is sent out to buy coffee, cigarettes and the like. A secretary is both a necessity and a comforting luxury for many executives, who are terror-stricken at the prospect of having to do without one. But she certainly should be encouraged to do much more than menial jobs and be given a better chance to get ahead in the company.