Clerical Work at Mid-Century

Significant numbers of African-American women were hired into clerical work in the 1960s.

Clerical work was no longer seen as just an interlude before marriage, but as a potential long-term career that women could return to after having children.

Employers felt that older women had superior skills in shorthand, spelling, grammar, and typing, were more dependable and had a stronger work ethic, had less turnover and absenteeism, and were less self-absorbed than younger, single women.

Better access to education fuelled their personal ambitions and gave them recognizable advantages in a tight labor market, exposing the shortcomings of clerical work such as low pay, short career ladders, and workplace discrimination.

Part-time or 'mothers' hours' for clerical work allowed cost-savings for employers and helped allay concerns that full-time paid work for women was incompatible with marriage and motherhood.

The actual experience of employing older women was likely different from what employers expected, as studies found managers praising the virtues of older versus younger women clerical workers.

The dwindling supply of younger women contributed to the re-alignment of attitudes about the suitability of older women for clerical work.

Employers felt that older women had a stronger work ethic, apparently because of their stricter upbringing relative to the more permissive upbringing of 20 year olds.

The changing personal ambitions of younger, educated women, fuelled by better access to education, contributed to their dissatisfaction with clerical work, which was seen as low paid and having short career ladders.

Betty Darlington remarked that for all the years she worked at a large insurance company in the 1940s and 1950s, they didn't have any black people and a rare woman got promoted, illustrating the lack of diversity and promotion opportunities for women in clerical work during that time.