Men, Women, and Workplaces

 

June 1949. The American Medical Association’s annual convention was held in Atlantic City, filling the run-down seaside town’s parking lots with out-of-state Cadillacs. One of the main events of the weekend was demonstrating a new tool for training doctors, medical color television, a futuristic-seeming replacement for the tiers of ringed seats of the traditional operating room surgical amphitheater. But TV was too poor a teaching substitute until color came along. After an elaborate luncheon was over, a spokesman for the manufacturer, Smith, Kline, and French, strongly suggested that the doctors’ wives leave the hall, as the live images would be very graphic.

To his surprise, most of the ladies stayed and watched, most of them impassively sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. (I mentioned it was 1949, right?) Someone explained to the SKF man that the women were, or had been nurses, and had seen far worse. “They met their husbands on the job”. In 1949, that was as common a fact of women’s lives as hats, white gloves, and handbags. For women, getting ahead in life generally involved marriage, with the goal of marrying “up”. It had always been the way of the world.

November 1977. A brave new world for men and women, after the overlapping but different ‘50s–‘70s cultural revolutions associated with Playboy, Cosmopolitan, and Ms. magazines, but far from a completely changed one. Xerox Corporation held its worldwide conference for executives in Boca Raton. The last day was Futures Day, when most of the attendees would finally get their first-ever look at the next-generation office technology that the company had been creating since 1973. To them, the Xerox Alto workstation was a TV you could type on, like the personal computers that were just beginning to appear. But Alto came with word processing (a new term) built-in, networking, and a new invention that played to Xerox’s strengths, the laser printer. Attendees were invited to step forward and spend some time using the new equipment.

The men were moderately impressed. “Interesting” was the consensus, but by and large, they weren’t that excited by seeing what a productivity step like this could mean for business. By contrast, their wives, nearly all of them well-to-do or outright wealthy, jumped right in, folded their Chanel tweed jackets, kicked off their high heels, and started typing and formatting, exclaiming to each other what an amazing thing this was. It looked incongruous, even funny as the rich ladies quickly figured the system out.

But it made sense. Almost all of them had been secretaries. That’s how they met their husbands: on the job. For the 1977 wives, many of the furtive office romances that led to matrimony took place in the Mad Men era, 1960-’70, back in that mixed time that fell between Playboy and the phenomenon we’d come to call, simply, the women’s movement. In 1974, New York Magazine did an issue about the world a quarter-century back. The lead article was titled 1949: Feminism’s Nadir.

Only a few years later, now forty years ago (where does the time go?), I encountered that “future office”, even the very same networked computer system, now christened the Xerox Star. A friend of mine, a fledgling lawyer, got me a temp job in a large, busy law firm when another job offer fell through and I needed rent money fast. I was there for a couple of months, first as a file clerk, then as organizer of their rapidly growing stock of magnetic media.

The law firm was a well-oiled machine that ran lean and stacked up the billable hours. Think litigation, not Perry Mason. Except for the three partners, the other two dozen or so lawyers spent their long workdays reading documents, dictating into a microphone, or (more rarely) talking on the telephone.

The product of all this endless, day in and day out, talking and dictating and interviewing and deposing was handed off to a large secretarial pool, pounding away at IBM Selectrics. Only the three partners had their own assigned staff; everyone else competed for resources. And if the firm were an army, the officers were all men, and the enlisted ranks were about 90% women. That was pretty typical in those days.

Not one of the lawyers so much as had a typewriter in his office. There were no computer keyboards on their desktops either—not quite yet. By contrast, by 1981 there had already been generations of college women who’d helped their boyfriends by typing their papers. Wives typed their husbands’ ways through law or medical school. That was perfectly normal in those days. Unless they’d been clerks in the armed forces, few men even knew how to type. Many men prided themselves on it.

The costly Xerox Star system was, so far, only used for editing and formatting the most valuable of their legal documents. Only the top echelon of secretaries, the firm’s uncompromising Bene Gesserit, was permitted to work with it, and the elite corps of young women at its three terminals were accompanied by one full time (male) systems technician who I suspected, even 40 years ago, of merely pretending he was needed.

Five days a week until well after five, the two dozen men with fancy sheepskins on their walls were separately trapped in their surprisingly small and un-fancy offices, although making a lot of money. By contrast, the five dozen or so women were all massed in big, noisy open-form offices, a vast, busy, and very social unit that amounted to a female company-within-a-company. They spent most of their work lives typing, correcting, and editing the work product they got on tape from the lawyers. The rivers of talk led to rivers of printed text, which led to rivers of money, which led to all of our paychecks.

The older ladies frequently showed patience while tacitly helping teach newly hired-but-“green” young male lawyers how to deal with the firm’s assembly-line pace. The women weren’t lawyers, and in that era had rarely expected to be. They expected, deserved, and got, respect for the jobs they did choose. So it was with muted, oddly mixed feelings that they greeted a young woman, fresh from a Florida law school, newly admitted to the California bar. This wasn’t a rarity by 1981, but it was still new to most of the lawyers and secretaries.

If this were a Lifetime made-for-TV movie, the women would have stood up as one, proud and sassy, with a big, smiling round of applause for the new attorney. Sure, a couple of unattractive, clueless men in the office might have tried to get handsy with her, but she’d have effortlessly put them in their place. Gestures of sisterly solidarity would have covered her path like rose petals.

In real life, though, it didn’t work out as simply as that. So far as I could tell (admittedly, a real limitation, but there was little to no privacy there), the men didn’t try to hit on her. She got an office and staff support equal to her male coworkers. A no-nonsense sort, she got right down to business. A brisk, successful transition, by all appearances.

But the stereotype-breaker was: the women didn’t like her and didn’t like working with her. Partly it was her chilly personality. She didn’t go out of her way to relate, and she clearly didn’t see herself as being much like the other women. In effect, she saw herself as needing to prove herself as if she were an officer among enlisted ranks; they saw her as a stuck-up snob who thought she was better than the rest of them. Neither was entirely wrong. Despite what the era’s slogans said, Sisterhood isn’t always powerful.

There was another, entirely human and understandable element in the secretaries’ reactions that did track with female dissatisfaction with the workplace, a mixture of only semi-admitted envy and an undercurrent of self-blame: here she was, making the big bucks and giving orders. What did I do wrong?

My temp job lasted four months. The managing partner offered me a full-time gig, which was more than decent of him, but the real job that I’d been holding out for came through. About a year later, out of nowhere, a lawyer sent me an invitation to one of their elite social mixers at the Beverly Hills Country Club, which I was happy to attend.

As the evening drew to a close and I started drifting towards the exit, I fell into the conversational circle of an elegantly dressed woman in her late forties. I’d later learn she was the wife of one of the partners. I was introduced, rather generously, as someone who’d once worked at her husband’s law firm. When I told her I wasn’t a lawyer she perked up. “Oh, thank God!”, she said, laughing. She asked what sort of things I’d seen in my time there and I told her.

I wasn’t surprised that she was conservative; in Beverly Hills, it was not nearly as rare then as it would be now. The boards of directors of L.A.’s other country clubs went after studio chiefs as marquee names; BHCC went after Buzz Aldrin. One of the other guests lit her cigarette while the valet ran to fetch her car. She turned her attention back towards me. “I know you’ve heard lots of bad things about the Fifties, but for me, it was a wonderful time in my life. I liked being an office girl”. She looked amused at my (no doubt) doubting expression.

“Oh, I knew I was luckier than most. There were some drawbacks once in a while. But I met a fine man and married him. Women today don’t get a full picture of back then”.

That old quote came to mind: “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there”. Its lessons are rarely simple or one-sided. She was talking about her life twenty-five years earlier. It’s been forty years since this conversation took place.

She sighed, stubbed out the cigarette, and donned her fur coat. Blackgama, the best of its time. The valet re-appeared with the car. She smiled and nodded goodbye. The big black Cadillac swallowed her up and she vanished down Wilshire Boulevard.

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  1. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    She (View Comment):

    Oddly, I don’t much ever remember dressing to please a man, or to get the attention of men in general. Now that I’m well into a period of my life where any clothing without an elastic waist, and any shoes without a generous toe-box aren’t even considerations on the rare occasions I shop for same (I pass over my Fruit of the Loom smalls in the interest of not venturing into realms of TMI), I do dimly remember buying clothes I thought were pretty and flattering, and shoes I thought were nice (although comfort has always been a factor there for me), just because wearing nice clothes and attractive shoes made me feel more poised, accomplished, and self-confident.* That, for me, was always a much more meaningful part of gussying myself up that trying to please a man. I doubt I’m alone among the female sex in that regard.

    *And if I should, somehow, have captured the attention of a nice, smart, interesting man who didn’t mind a smart, capable, not too-bad-looking, self-confident woman, that was a nice side-benefit, but not the main purpose, as far as I was concerned. (I adjudge my life largely successful in this respect.)

    We were just having a discussion about fashion in the PiT (the horror!) and I had the same thought. 90% of the time I dress like a slightly less lesbian Fran Leibowitz; jeans, jacket or men’s style button up shirt, and all. If it makes me feel well put together and happy, then I’m going with it. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    This is sans the camel colored, elbow patch jacket I would normally throw over it, and matching boots, but it hardly screams ‘Ravish me, darling!’ 

    • #31
  2. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    Men and women working together is still in its experimental phase. This is not the way of the species and is something from post industrialization. And the Pill. Heck, adequate means to manage menstruation did not happen until the 20th Century.

    What is amazing is that we ignore so much that is real. High Heels and make up exist to make women more sexually appealing. We allow that as part of the dress code, yet, if a man responds (well if the wrong man responds) with a look, it is considered “bad”. Why do we let women advertise, so to speak, if the men cannot respond? I wish we could actually have these sorts of conversations as a nation, but it is not going to happen right now.

    That’s not entirely true, really. Men and women worked together in domestic service for centuries, early textile (and other) factories in the UK and US were often staffed with female workers and male supervisors, cottage industry were mixed gender (though those working together were almost always related in some way), bookkeeping in early modern trading and banking firms was done by women in many instances, etc.

    Families working together is not the same as non-families thrust together in the workplace. As far as textile factories, there is a huge difference between men as supervisors and women as workers, as opposed to men and women working alongside each other as equals, which the OP talked about. 

    As far as the high heels and make-up thing goes, it’s not as though women came up with that on their own. Bosses (mostly male) through the first half of the 20th century and even beyond had a distinctive image of feminine professionalism, and women had to live up to that in order to get and stay employed. There was also stigma, for a variety of reasons, against dressing in a masculine way. At this point, those objects are deeply culturally engrained as markers of female professionalism.

    That really does not do anything to disprove my point. Women wear clothing designed to make them more sexualized. I think we should talk about that in the workplace. Nowhere did I blame women for anything. 

    Also, I think men should be able to be relied upon to show basic respect and self-control in a professional environment; they’re not children, they can very well see a woman in something that highlights her legs or eyes and keep from blurting out every fantasy in their heads. If women can watch a man roll up his shirtsleeves or unbutton a bit of his work shirt and keep from “responding”, men can do just the same.

    What I was talking about is that men are not allowed even to look.  That is a pretty high bar to set. I am not saying men should leer, but we live in a time when women demand that they can flaunt it, but a glance by the wrong man can ruin his life. I kinda like that this video has to say: 

     

    When I was young, I would have disagreed with what I am saying now. I would have denied that men and women even think differently, and that there were no issues with them working together. I now know that is just not the case. There are problems with mixed sex work forces. That is not a call to eliminate them, that is a call to talk about the problems without jumping into blaming either sex for anything. 

    I do call to have only men in front line military units. By every test, they outperform mixed units. 

    • #32
  3. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):
    As far as the high heels and make-up thing goes, it’s not as though women came up with that on their own. Bosses (mostly male) through the first half of the 20th century and even beyond had a distinctive image of feminine professionalism, and women had to live up to that in order to get and stay employed

    This adds an alternative motivation and gives one more to think about. Are those objects so deeply culturally engrained as markers of female professionalism that they are adopted without much thought? They do appeal to masculine fantasy.

    I think so. I’ve had friends whose bosses or colleagues asked if they were sick, or implied they looked off in an unprofessional way, if they skipped out on a full face of make-up for a day. Likewise, whenever we discussed employer interviews or important presentations  at LSE, a ‘nice blouse/dress and heels’ was given as the uniform for them.

    • #33
  4. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Also, I think men should be able to be relied upon to show basic respect and self-control in a professional environment; they’re not children, they can very well see a woman in something that highlights her legs or eyes and keep from blurting out every fantasy in their heads. If women can watch a man roll up his shirtsleeves or unbutton a bit of his work shirt and keep from “responding”, men can do just the same.

    I like this view. This works.

    Men and women can be expected to focus on work and moderate behavior in respect for conflicting personalities. On the other hand, civility also includes some tolerance for missteps and the plain reality that business is always personal. Most of life is business for many people.

    Thus, a guy should not be making lewd remarks or be hitting on every female coworker, especially after one has made her discomfort known. But neither should complimenting a coworker on her appearance be considered a firing offense or cause for sexual harassment training. In a sane society, harassment is not merely being hit on or insulted. Most agitations can be quickly moved past with a little character.

    Men among men are also rightly expected to have thick skins. It’s not a sexual prejudice. It’s simply allowing for human nature.

    • #34
  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):
    Men among men are also rightly expected to have thick skins. It’s not a sexual prejudice. It’s simply allowing for human nature.

    Oh, man, ain’t that the truth.

    • #35
  6. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    What is amazing is that we ignore so much that is real. High Heels and make up exist to make women more sexually appealing.

    This is not necessarily so. Women dress for themselves, as much as for others. What you see as sexually appealing is seen by many women as merely putting their best foot forward, like a “game face.”  It is “making an effort” – not to land a guy, but to be focused toward professionalism and success.

    That high heels and makeup dovetails with what some men consider “hot” can be seen as almost incidental.

    • #36
  7. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Also, I think men should be able to be relied upon to show basic respect and self-control in a professional environment; they’re not children, they can very well see a woman in something that highlights her legs or eyes and keep from blurting out every fantasy in their heads. If women can watch a man roll up his shirtsleeves or unbutton a bit of his work shirt and keep from “responding”, men can do just the same.

    I like this view. This works.

    Men and women can be expected to focus on work and moderate behavior in respect for conflicting personalities. On the other hand, civility also includes some tolerance for missteps and the plain reality that business is always personal. Most of life is business for many people.

    Thus, a guy should not be making lewd remarks or hitting on every female coworker, especially after one has made her discomfort known. But neither should complimenting a coworker on her appearance be considered a firing offense or cause for sexual harassment training. In a sane society, harassment is not merely being hit on or insulted. Most agitations can be quickly moved past with a little character.

    Men among men are also rightly expected to have thick skins. It’s not a sexual prejudice. It’s simply allowing for human nature.

    In 1963, this specific behavior that I witnessed almost daily by my next two levels of bosses was instrumental in my taking my services to another bank. Their approach was to discuss female workers in a sexually-focused way during the shift changeover. They worked days and I was the night shift manager with lots of attractive ladies on both shifts. That change of jobs was big in my life scheme, so sometimes events that seem negative can lead to good results. I’ve had lots of these in my life.

    • #37
  8. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    iWe (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    What is amazing is that we ignore so much that is real. High Heels and make up exist to make women more sexually appealing.

    This is not necessarily so. Women dress for themselves, as much as for others. What you see as sexually appealing is seen by many women as merely putting their best foot forward, like a “game face.” It is “making an effort” – not to land a guy, but to be focused toward professionalism and success.

    That high heels and makeup dovetails with what some men consider “hot” can be seen as almost incidental.

    I think women dress for other women.  Men mostly don’t see, unless something is flagrantly sexy.  We got taken to lunch by a female sales rep once.  She’d spent about 15 minutes in the office, while the guys had been in there all morning.  She was the only one who knew what color blouse one of the women in the office had on that day.

    • #38
  9. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Also, I think men should be able to be relied upon to show basic respect and self-control in a professional environment; they’re not children, they can very well see a woman in something that highlights her legs or eyes and keep from blurting out every fantasy in their heads. If women can watch a man roll up his shirtsleeves or unbutton a bit of his work shirt and keep from “responding”, men can do just the same.

    I like this view. This works.

    Men and women can be expected to focus on work and moderate behavior in respect for conflicting personalities. On the other hand, civility also includes some tolerance for missteps and the plain reality that business is always personal. Most of life is business for many people.

    Thus, a guy should not be making lewd remarks or be hitting on every female coworker, especially after one has made her discomfort known. But neither should complimenting a coworker on her appearance be considered a firing offense or cause for sexual harassment training. In a sane society, harassment is not merely being hit on or insulted. Most agitations can be quickly moved past with a little character.

     

    You’re broadly right here, but I think the one thing (or many things that boil down to one) men need to consider in why women react the way they sometimes do, in going to HR or whatever else, is past experience and women’s perspective. A man is taking a risk in propositioning a women he works with because he has no idea what her past experiences with that look like; if, for example, she ended up with a stalker or an angry office mate there or in a past place of work because she turned the offer of a date down. This is especially true when it’s a man who is higher up in the organization propositioning a woman, because she doesn’t know if/how he will retaliate when she turns him down, and if she needs to tell HR or another, even higher person to prevent herself proactively from being slandered or fired for a made up offense. Not to mention if it’s something that’s happened multiple times in a short amount of times and creates a sense that one is not being seen as an equal employee but a sex object. 

    • #39
  10. She Member
    She
    @She

    She (View Comment):

    Rather, I choose to focus on my satisfaction, the day my principal tormentor came into work with a lump the size of an egg on his head and a black eye, and shame-facedly admitted that his wife had whacked him on the head with a frozen leg of lamb the previous evening.  Or on some of the riotous office parties, in particular, the one where the branch manager and his #1 salesman pushed each other head first into the cake, and then took off their shirts and smeared cake and frosting all over their chests.

    I’ll stipulate that Chuck (Mr. “Isn’t She Lovely; Look at those hooker shoes” frozen leg-of-lamb himself), Leo, and Vic (the fellows smothered in cake) were absolutely lovely men.  They were, indeed all ex-IBM typewriter salesmen and could, when they’d had enough to drink, be chivvied into singing Ever Onward, IBM (apologies for the appalling animation), which they did indeed assemble in the building lobby every morning to sing over the decades they were employed at Big Blue.

    They were all devoted family men and honest as the day is long.  Clueless about computers though, which led to some interesting situations in which I and the other ladies in the same role as myself regularly found ourselves trying to salvage sales in which things which had been over-promised or misconstrued.

    I don’t think any of the ladies in the office minded the occasional arm around the shoulders, compliment on the new dress, or–yes, this happened regularly–the appearance of a few extra bucks in an envelope on our desks after a particularly advantageous sale in which we’d played a significant role.  (Leo had to be restrained, on occasion, from following me into the ladies’ room when he couldn’t stop talking about a particularly thorny customer relations problem he had on his mind.)

    Hands down, from our point of view though, the best sales rep in the office was a woman.  Because she totally got all sides of the equation.  Connie.  I learned a hell of a lot from her, and count her largely responsible for my own success (which was considerable) a few years later, when I was at the tip of the spear selling IBM PCs myself.

    Somehow, at least in my working life, my relations with male co-workers always seemed more on the ‘brotherly’ side than the ‘predator’ side.  With two exceptions: Dave “Catastrophe” (that wasn’t his last name, but the office manager–who was from Hungary–always mangled it, and that’s how it came out), who believed that any interaction, whether pleasant or dismissive, with a female co-worker always indicated that she wanted to get in his pants, and [name withheld], who when I outpaced him several times over in annual PC sales, wrote a letter to the president of the company in which he accused me of sleeping with the branch manager, who then assigned me all the “good” accounts.  He was a jerk on many fronts, and I was enlightened to find, a couple of decades later when he crossed my mind and I thought, “wonder whatever happened to good old whats-his-name?” to discover that he’s on a list or registered sex offenders.

    • #40
  11. Amy Schley, Longcat Shrinker Coolidge
    Amy Schley, Longcat Shrinker
    @AmySchley

    iWe (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    What is amazing is that we ignore so much that is real. High Heels and make up exist to make women more sexually appealing.

    This is not necessarily so. Women dress for themselves, as much as for others. What you see as sexually appealing is seen by many women as merely putting their best foot forward, like a “game face.” It is “making an effort” – not to land a guy, but to be focused toward professionalism and success.

    That high heels and makeup dovetails with what some men consider “hot” can be seen as almost incidental.

    Not to mention compete with other females for status. “The girls walk by, dressed up for each other” isn’t just a nice line in a song. 

    • #41
  12. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    iWe (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    What is amazing is that we ignore so much that is real. High Heels and make up exist to make women more sexually appealing.

    This is not necessarily so. Women dress for themselves, as much as for others. What you see as sexually appealing is seen by many women as merely putting their best foot forward, like a “game face.” It is “making an effort” – not to land a guy, but to be focused toward professionalism and success.

    That high heels and makeup dovetails with what some men consider “hot” can be seen as almost incidental.

    I have a different perspective on this aspect of human existence. I think women choose their clothing with the same eyes with which they see their gardens and dinner tables. They are putting together shapes and colors that are beautiful to them as they are looking at them. They want to share the beauty with others in the way they see that beauty.

    I’ve always found it interesting that actually, the traditional man’s suit has always set off the human face, with its exciting angles and shadows, much better than women’s clothing. Women don’t actually see themselves as beautiful and don’t set off their face as elegantly.

    In other words, men dress more attractively than women do.

    I think women at some point realized this and started wearing the types of clothes that men have traditionally worn–the LL Bean unisex sweaters and shirts that became popular in the 1980s come to mind.

    I also think the solid-color, high-collared shirt is popular now with women because women age better today–that is, they look better to themselves than they ever have throughout human history. They aren’t afraid to draw attention to their face because they have been working hard to keep its youthful beauty. Men historically had an advantage in the aging department. Their skin was better.

    Just a thought I keep coming back to,  . . .  :-)

    • #42
  13. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Every place I’ve ever worked has had a significant number of women in professional positions. The same is true of almost every organization I’ve managed. There have been occasional problems, but, really, not all that many.

    I’ll note also that one of the best ways for people to get acquainted is in a work environment. Huge harm is being done by the current environment of sexual panic, where apparently many men are actually afraid to ask out a woman that they know at work (or actually prohibited from doing so) or even establishing a work friendship.  The same is often true in college environments.

     

    • #43
  14. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    She (View Comment):
    Dave “Catastrophe” (that wasn’t his last name, but the office manager–who was from Hungary–always mangled it, and that’s how it came out), who believed that any interaction, whether pleasant or dismissive, with a female co-worker always indicated that she wanted to get in his pants, and [name withheld], who when I outpaced him several times over in annual PC sales, wrote a letter to the president of the company in which he accused me of sleeping with the branch manager, who then assigned me all the “good” accounts. 

    Sleazeballs like that are usually as obvious to men as to women. Gentile managers will tolerate them to a point (such as egregious accusations like you mention). Like-minded managers indicate a deplorable company culture not worth enduring. 

    Most large companies employ some jerks. Some companies are run by jerks and should be anathema to all, when possible.

    • #44
  15. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    Men and women working together is still in its experimental phase. This is not the way of the species and is something from post industrialization. And the Pill. Heck, adequate means to manage menstruation did not happen until the 20th Century.

    What is amazing is that we ignore so much that is real. High Heels and make up exist to make women more sexually appealing. We allow that as part of the dress code, yet, if a man responds (well if the wrong man responds) with a look, it is considered “bad”. Why do we let women advertise, so to speak, if the men cannot respond? I wish we could actually have these sorts of conversations as a nation, but it is not going to happen right now.

    That’s not entirely true, really. Men and women worked together in domestic service for centuries, early textile (and other) factories in the UK and US were often staffed with female workers and male supervisors, cottage industry were mixed gender (though those working together were almost always related in some way), bookkeeping in early modern trading and banking firms was done by women in many instances, etc.

    As far as the high heels and make-up thing goes, it’s not as though women came up with that on their own. Bosses (mostly male) through the first half of the 20th century and even beyond had a distinctive image of feminine professionalism, and women had to live up to that in order to get and stay employed. There was also stigma, for a variety of reasons, against dressing in a masculine way. At this point, those objects are deeply culturally engrained as markers of female professionalism.

    Also, I think men should be able to be relied upon to show basic respect and self-control in a professional environment; they’re not children, they can very well see a woman in something that highlights her legs or eyes and keep from blurting out every fantasy in their heads. If women can watch a man roll up his shirtsleeves or unbutton a bit of his work shirt and keep from “responding”, men can do just the same.

    Yeah, it’s all the bosses fault.  No, women have been using make-up and fetching jewelry since the beginning of time.

    • #45
  16. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    She (View Comment):
    They were, indeed all ex-IBM typewriter salesmen and could, when they’d had enough to drink, be chivvied into singing Ever Onward, IBM (apologies for the appalling animation), which they did indeed assemble in the building lobby every morning to sing over the decades they were employed at Big Blue.

    Wow. I had NO IDEA such a song ever existed. Wowsers.

    • #46
  17. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):
    As far as the high heels and make-up thing goes, it’s not as though women came up with that on their own. Bosses (mostly male) through the first half of the 20th century and even beyond had a distinctive image of feminine professionalism, and women had to live up to that in order to get and stay employed

    This adds an alternative motivation and gives one more to think about. Are those objects so deeply culturally engrained as markers of female professionalism that they are adopted without much thought? They do appeal to masculine fantasy.

    I think so. I’ve had friends whose bosses or colleagues asked if they were sick, or implied they looked off in an unprofessional way, if they skipped out on a full face of make-up for a day. Likewise, whenever we discussed employer interviews or important presentations at LSE, a ‘nice blouse/dress and heels’ was given as the uniform for them.

    Just out of curiosity, who gave the uniform?  And were they largely men or were they women?

    • #47
  18. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Amy Schley, Longcat Shrinker (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    Not to mention compete with other females for status. “The girls walk by, dressed up for each other” isn’t just a nice line in a song.

    A guy once told me he was turned off of church attendance because in his small town chapel growing up the women would enviously compete by dressing to the nines and gossiping about each other. Men compete and gossip too, often in other ways.

    Consider failure in the opposite direction. How many companies, churches, and other communities struggle against sloth and indifference of attire? It is generally considered proper to regard oneself and others by care of appearance. But the standards vary by setting.

    Often, why we do things is evident in how we do things. But some people are clueless — about fashion, sexual relations, or other constants of society.  Sometimes, cultures clash. Developing and maintaining a company culture are real concerns.

    • #48
  19. Captain French Moderator
    Captain French
    @AlFrench

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Gary McVey: By contrast, by 1981 there had already been generations of college women who’d helped their boyfriends by typing their papers. Wives typed their husbands’ ways through law or medical school. That was perfectly normal in those days. Unless they’d been clerks in the armed forces, few men even knew how to type. Many men prided themselves on it.

    I took typing in high school, foreseeing the need. I was never very good–35 wpm, and I generally had to look when I was typing numbers–but I typed all my papers in college and law school.

    Me too.

    • #49
  20. Some Call Me ...Tim Coolidge
    Some Call Me ...Tim
    @SomeCallMeTim

    Great post, as usual.  These types of stories are what I like best about Ricochet.  The comments are extremely interesting, which is an indication of how good the post is.  The discussion brings back memories of my experiences with female Marines during my career, which were almost always positive.  But I must admit it was much simpler when it was only males.

    • #50
  21. She Member
    She
    @She

    Of course there are women who dress and tart themselves up primarily to please men they’ve never met; and there are women who dress to compete with and, they hope, outdo other women, either among themselves with others of their sex, or in the ‘come hither’ department with men.  But I suggest that making broad (see what I did there) generalizations, such as a few that have been made in this thread, is a mistake, just as I think the (carefully expressed) skepticism that a woman might want to make herself attractive simply to please, and feel good about, herself, is also a mistake.

    Certainly, one can do the same thing WRT men’s proclivities.  After all, there must be a reason that the term “a [locally understood word for the defining portion of male anatomy] contest” is universally acknowledged and understood when it’s used and why it is that particular term which is employed in the metaphor.  But although I’ve run into a number of devotees when it comes to competing for the medal, certainly, not every man I’ve ever known has been obsessed with winning one.

    Much better if we just take people as we find them, I think.

    Kudos to @marcin, #42, for a most interesting take, and one which perhaps relates to some ideas that my stepdaughter and I have been kicking around.  Maybe more later.

    • #51
  22. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    David Foster (View Comment):

    Every place I’ve ever worked has had a significant number of women in professional positions. The same is true of almost every organization I’ve managed. There have been occasional problems, but, really, not all that many.

    I’ll note also that one of the best ways for people to get acquainted is in a work environment. Huge harm is being done by the current environment of sexual panic, where apparently many men are actually afraid to ask out a woman that they know at work (or actually prohibited from doing so) or even establishing a work friendship. The same is often true in college environments.

     

    For those who weren’t around for sexual harassment training in the 90s, it was made clear to us that the only sure way to avoid being on the losing end of a lawsuit was to not talk to people about anything but work.  Never make a personal comment or ask a personal question, never volunteer any personal information about yourself.

    • #52
  23. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    David Foster (View Comment):
    Every place I’ve ever worked has had a significant number of women in professional positions.

    My experience is the opposite.  I’ve worked all my life in construction; when I worked in the field, it was 99.9% male.  Even in offices, where I’ve spent the last 30 years, women make up a small per centage of the workers.

    • #53
  24. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Also, I think men should be able to be relied upon to show basic respect and self-control in a professional environment; they’re not children, they can very well see a woman in something that highlights her legs or eyes and keep from blurting out every fantasy in their heads. If women can watch a man roll up his shirtsleeves or unbutton a bit of his work shirt and keep from “responding”, men can do just the same.

    I like this view. This works.

    Men and women can be expected to focus on work and moderate behavior in respect for conflicting personalities. On the other hand, civility also includes some tolerance for missteps and the plain reality that business is always personal. Most of life is business for many people.

    Thus, a guy should not be making lewd remarks or hitting on every female coworker, especially after one has made her discomfort known. But neither should complimenting a coworker on her appearance be considered a firing offense or cause for sexual harassment training. In a sane society, harassment is not merely being hit on or insulted. Most agitations can be quickly moved past with a little character.

    Men among men are also rightly expected to have thick skins. It’s not a sexual prejudice. It’s simply allowing for human nature.

    In 1963, this specific behavior that I witnessed almost daily by my next two levels of bosses was instrumental in my taking my services to another bank. Their approach was to discuss female workers in a sexually-focused way during the shift changeover. They worked days and I was the night shift manager with lots of attractive ladies on both shifts. That change of jobs was big in my life scheme, so sometimes events that seem negative can lead to good results. I’ve had lots of these in my life.

    I going to add a little more substance here that will illustrate the point I last made.

    One of the ladies who was among those addressed in sexually-focused comments was my future bride. Suffice it to say I knew nothing even of the possibility of that eventuality at that time.  We just celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary. 

     

     

    • #54
  25. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    iWe (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    What is amazing is that we ignore so much that is real. High Heels and make up exist to make women more sexually appealing.

    This is not necessarily so. Women dress for themselves, as much as for others. What you see as sexually appealing is seen by many women as merely putting their best foot forward, like a “game face.” It is “making an effort” – not to land a guy, but to be focused toward professionalism and success.

    That high heels and makeup dovetails with what some men consider “hot” can be seen as almost incidental.

    High Heels make the body more sexual. That is their purpose. Now, they my care more about how they look to each other, but that does not make my point invalid. Men are the one who care about penis size, far more than women. Similar sort of thing. 

    • #55
  26. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Amy Schley, Longcat Shrinker (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    What is amazing is that we ignore so much that is real. High Heels and make up exist to make women more sexually appealing.

    This is not necessarily so. Women dress for themselves, as much as for others. What you see as sexually appealing is seen by many women as merely putting their best foot forward, like a “game face.” It is “making an effort” – not to land a guy, but to be focused toward professionalism and success.

    That high heels and makeup dovetails with what some men consider “hot” can be seen as almost incidental.

    Not to mention compete with other females for status. “The girls walk by, dressed up for each other” isn’t just a nice line in a song.

    Women competing for status is about landing a mate. That is the biological impulse. The most attractive woman gets to choose the best mate (since women are the sexual selectors in humans). 

    I am not saying we are bound by out biology, but we need to be honest. High heels and make up are designed to increase sexual attractiveness. Red lipstick makes a women look younger with more color, and therefore more desirable to the male, because younger women are more fertile etc. etc. Putting on lipstick or wearing heels does not mean the woman is looking for a mate. It does mean she wants to look more attractive. 

    • #56
  27. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Captain French (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Gary McVey: By contrast, by 1981 there had already been generations of college women who’d helped their boyfriends by typing their papers. Wives typed their husbands’ ways through law or medical school. That was perfectly normal in those days. Unless they’d been clerks in the armed forces, few men even knew how to type. Many men prided themselves on it.

    I took typing in high school, foreseeing the need. I was never very good–35 wpm, and I generally had to look when I was typing numbers–but I typed all my papers in college and law school.

    Me too.

    When I was in junior high my mom signed me up for summer school in an effort to stave off school of the reform variety. Pickings were slim. I took Home Econ, figuring that sooner or later I would need to be able to cook, and typing because one day I’d need that too.

    • #57
  28. KirkianWanderer Inactive
    KirkianWanderer
    @KirkianWanderer

    Flicker (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):
    As far as the high heels and make-up thing goes, it’s not as though women came up with that on their own. Bosses (mostly male) through the first half of the 20th century and even beyond had a distinctive image of feminine professionalism, and women had to live up to that in order to get and stay employed

    This adds an alternative motivation and gives one more to think about. Are those objects so deeply culturally engrained as markers of female professionalism that they are adopted without much thought? They do appeal to masculine fantasy.

    I think so. I’ve had friends whose bosses or colleagues asked if they were sick, or implied they looked off in an unprofessional way, if they skipped out on a full face of make-up for a day. Likewise, whenever we discussed employer interviews or important presentations at LSE, a ‘nice blouse/dress and heels’ was given as the uniform for them.

    Just out of curiosity, who gave the uniform? And were they largely men or were they women?

    I meant uniform in a somewhat metaphorical sense (it was the expectation). Both, pretty evenly. 

    • #58
  29. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    When I started work, the lawyers were all men, though to be fair, there had recently been a woman among the senior lawyers, rumored to be a failed candidate for partner. Her specialty was Family Law, for decades the legal profession’s ghetto for women, but the firm found its fortune by becoming a hired gun for “the bad guys”—corporations defending large civil suits.

    When I walked through their doors in 1981, their single biggest case was the ongoing suit over the MGM Grand fire the previous November, where 87 people died. Product liability defense in the mere millions paid the rent. The youngest of the new lawyers, like hungry lion cubs, were first given starter cases, like defenses of car battery companies in suits over acid explosions.

    • #59
  30. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):
    I meant uniform in a somewhat metaphorical sense (it was the expectation). Both, pretty evenly. 

    Lately, I have entertained the possibility of starting to wear a sports coat (aka, semi-suit) (after acquiring one) to Sunday Mass, to dress up as much for God as I would for a wedding or funeral (for which I’m told my existing suits are out of fashion and now overly formal… because fashions are unreasonable). In other words, perhaps it’s time I relent to urban culture and adopt the uniform. The uniform means nothing to me, but when in Rome… 

    That said, men’s suits still strike me as ridiculously impractical in hot and humid climates like that of Houston. Conversely, snowbirds are never expected to strip down to one layer in winter. 

    It’s hard to believe God once told Moses to kick off the shoes because one should walk barefoot on sacred ground. If I wore sandals to Mass, the pastor would probably smite me. 

    • #60
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