The 1970s saw phenomenal changes in the employment picture. One of the most important reasons for increased opportunities for women has been Affirmative Action legislation which compels companies involved in federal government contracts to end discrimination against employment and promotion of women and members of other minority groups. Undoubtedly, many an executive faced with the possibility of court action for violations has looked around for possible candidates for promotion and has promoted a female secretary whose quality of performance was already known.
A sampling of former secretaries who were promoted in recent years attests to this point: Mary Sahora was appointed as director of Marketing Services for the Eastern Division of South-Western Publishing Company; Pauline Wallace is senior staff officer of Citibank in New York; Joan Manley became head of the board and chief executive of Time-Life Books and a group vice president and a director of Time, Incorporated; Kay Wright was appointed as director of administration of CBS News in New York; Melba Devlin was made assistant to the chair and president of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, Incorporated, and Mary Holstad was appointed to the Iowa Commerce Commission.
In all fairness, though, it must be pointed out that new entry-level management jobs for women are opening up. Women are being hired for more and more jobs in all categories of the business world, including management. Today, a woman secretary attempting to advance her career will find new competition with other women who earn their advancement via another path.
Limiting Factors in Secretarial Careers
In the traditional secretarial framework, the secretarial title follows the boss's title, not the workers ability. The secretary is sometimes rated a secretary B rather than a secretary A because of the status of his or her superior, not because of his or her competence.
Another limiting factor is the difference in concept of the word secretary. To attract applicants, a company will advertise for a secretary when the work is purely stenographic or even clerical. Then, too, secretary is a status symbol. Who ever heard an employer speak of "my stenographer" or "my clerk?" No, the reference is always to "my secretary." Even within a company, the executives have such a different concept of the term that one boss will assign a wide range of responsibilities while another will make such limited use of the secretary's abilities that the job becomes frustrating.
The final limiting factor is the necessity for the secretary to become totally involved with the employer's problems. As one secretary said candidly, "If I ever quit, it will be because I'm tired of thinking other people's thoughts and want to work on my own." The secretary is working with somebody else's ideas and is the person through whom these ideas are presented and implemented.
Educational Preparation
Stenographic-secretarial preparation is given at all educational levels from the high school up. Most high schools offer a specialization in this field. The usual curriculum includes, along with some non specialized courses, English (three or four years), possibly including a course in business writing; typewriting (two years); shorthand and transcription (two years); secretarial practice (one year or one semester); bookkeeping (may be omitted); business mathematics (may be omitted). Some schools vary this basic curriculum with inclusion of such courses as personal and business adjustment, data processing, business law, or business organization.
Recent innovations in high school business preparation include block programs of two or three periods replacing the usual forty- or fifty-minute class. Under this reorganization, class work more nearly approximates actual office conditions. Additionally, it permits the student to work at a task until it is completed rather than having to break off with the job half finished and possibly never completed. Many schools are offering advanced work through projects involving simulations in place of advanced typewriting and shorthand. In simulation projects, the school jobs resemble real office jobs, and the student can see the relationship between the job he or she is performing and the jobs of the other office workers. One of the advantages claimed for simulations is that the student receives training in office behavior, an aspect often overlooked in the traditional classroom.
Since the 1960s, two-year community colleges have grown into a major training ground for secretarial students. Since one of the objectives of these colleges is preparation for semiprofessional jobs, practically all of them offer a secretarial program. One such program is offered at Bronx Community College in New York City.
With the explosion of office technology and more specifically, word processing, many colleges have either integrated these concepts and offer equipment training in existing courses or have designed new courses for which secretarial students may opt to prepare themselves for changing environments.
In addition to public junior colleges, private junior colleges offer one- and two-year secretarial programs. Private business colleges, many of them accredited as junior colleges, are a primary source for business training. In many private business schools, a student may enroll at any time, not necessarily at the beginning of the term, and may progress at his or her own rate.
In addition to the school programs already described, secretarial courses are offered in almost all continuing education programs -at the YMCA, in evening high schools and colleges, in churches, in lodges, in company-training programs and wherever self-improvement is the goal. Business organizations are also forced by the shortages of stenographers and secretaries to offer in-service courses. It is not uncommon for clerks to pursue company courses in shorthand and typewriting in the hope of promotion to new jobs in the field; stenographers frequently are sent to company-sponsored courses in English grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and punctuation.
