The Rise of Corporate Feminism : : Women in the American Office, 1960–1990 / / Allison Elias.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2022
• VerfasserIn: Elias, Allison,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- 1 FEMINIST OR SECRETARY? -- 2 AT THE INTERSECTION OF SEX EQUALITY AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE -- 3 THE PROGRESSIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL PATHS INTERTWINED -- 4 OVERUTILIZED AND UNDERENFORCED -- 5 THE DECLINE OF THE OFFICE WIFE AND THE RISE OF THE “AUTOMATED HAREM” -- 6 COULD PINK- COLLAR WORKERS “SAVE THE LABOR MOVEMENT”? -- 7 A FEMINIST “BRAND CALLED YOU” -- EPILOGUE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES -- NOTES -- INDEX