the dumbing down of the secretarial profession. Why?

[onelittlefish]

DH and I have been having a discussion about a job that was seriously considered to be a serious profession - see above. Secretaries used to be really respected and have a really good general education and be able to speak more than one language. Also, historically it was reasonably well paid.

Before the first world war almost all secretaries were men (obviously sexism), now most secretaries are women and it is a job which is really little respected - the stereotype of a secretary is of one who is a bit dumb but quite sweet. I also feel that the job has been dumbed down. When I left college 20 years ago I came out with skills that I anticipated using - shorthand being one of them, organisational skills and a grasp of legal knowledge. I have never had to use shorthand, ever. Over many years I had to prove that I was capable of organising and dealing with clients in order to gain that much sought after respect (because I think people assume that you are dumb if you are a secretary).

I want to know if people think it is not respected because it is now done by women or is it because technology requires much less of the secretary and therefore it is a much easier job. Also, why don't men want to do it? Are there any other jobs like this?

When I started work in 1980 I was the desk secretary on a trading floor. I could type quite fast without making too many mistakes, I could draft a nice letter, I could remove the platten from the typewriter to give it a good clean, type telex tap accurately, write shorthand and transcribe it, make tea, and was a dab hand at working out manually columns and tabs for huge tables at the the end of the the day with the desk position. I was also good at tea, fending off sexist jokes, collecting dry cleaning and putting on the odd bet. Even then it was quite hard to get girls who could do it apparently.

I knew my days were numbered when the first word processor came in and it did all the working out for you. Luckily they knew I was a grafter and when I said I wanted to move on they promoted me to the syndicate desk and then I became a Eurobond Salesman.

When I retired to be a SAHM I didn't think I would go back to work again but I did and started at the bottom in something else. Now share a secretary with three others and HE is fantastic. Has all the computer literacy that I don't and does the most amazing things with Excel reports and pivot charts and makes a cracking cuppa for meetings.

I don't agree.

The definition is fairly clear but is only one of many that I could have quoted. You are free to look up others.

The OP is quite definitely not part of a profession, merely an occupation which requires certain basic skils.

Pendeen you do see to have a little bit of a chip on the old shoulder there.

If your son/brother/nephew was a footballer or makeup artist would you also decry them the "title" professional. They are called professional footballers and professional makeup artists. Is it not all a turn of phrase and nobody (apart from you) really seems that bothered.

Pendeen - fair enough, quote me the bit of the definition that matches up to what you claim. As far as I can see, it isn't there. You're just trying to make your ideas fit a definition, which is kinda pointless isn't it?

I'm well aware there are plenty of definitions of 'professional', and maybe with more effort you could have cited one that actually fits in with what you want to say (which this one does not). But what would be the point? Obviously we all have differing ideas of what it is to be a professional and could take issue with each other's definitions. Where my problem is, is that you seem to think your view (which involves belittling people in this profession) should have more authority because it's backed up by a definition you pulled off the net. My issue is simply that you didn't actually read the definition before you assumed it backed up your point!

Interesting thread, although I'm sorry I couldn't read every post in detail.

I've worked as a secretary in the past (legal field) and found it to be better paid than most public sector jobs, probably because alongside the lawyer and the partner, the secretary is a key part of the machinery that helps a client to win his/her case. As a legal secretary to two lawyers in a London firm I know I was part of a team that won new clients, and kept existing ones. I was integral to bringing in income to the firm. A computer or un-skilled person (including social skills) couldn't do the job. It's no meaningless comment when CEOs say they could not do their job without their secretary or PA.

I've not so much got a point to make as an observation that there are positive associations with the word 'secretary'.

Eg. Look at the job title of the leading figurehead of the world:
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Also the head of many international organisations, is usually a 'Secretary' something. The second most important job in the USA is 'Secretary of State'. And in the field of diplomacy, most diplomats' job titles are 'First Secretary, Second Secretary, Third Secretary... of trade/policy/defence etc etc'

Barring Ms. Rodham-Clinton most of those Secretarial jobs are held by men. If most secretaries in government or international organisations are men and most secretaries in the commercial world are women, why does the term 'secretary' lose respect? Can we blame films which portray it as a stockings-and-suspenders job which doesn't require much skill or IQ?

Ah, I've just read up and seen JuliaScurr's post "Secretary was 'the keeper of secrets', therefore male, therefore important." That explains Secretary of State et al then.

Didn't the guy with the lovely job of wiping the king's arse used to fill that role? Families used to pay huge bribes to get that job for some youngster in their clan

Obviously it depends on how you define secretary. I think we are talking about general secretarial work here not being the secretary of state.

I was talking about this to my Grandma over Christmas. She left school at 16 and became a secretary in the late thirties. She could speak three languages and had excellent English skills. She got paid two and a half times what her friends who went in to shop work were paid as her starting salary.

The difference between then and now was that she was from a working class family, married a working class man and considered secretarial work to be a working class job, which was how it was widely perceived at the time.

I think the issue now is that many people consider that if they have a degree (and in my experience most graduates in offices are not more highly skilled than my grandmother) or even post 16 education, you work in any kind of office environment and your wage is twice that of a shop worker you are in some sense 'middle class' and belong to the same social and economic group as dentists and vets rather than the same group as postmen and hairdressers.

I am not sure how that massive change in class consciousness has come about, but it seems to be to our detriment and yet is an idea promoted by both this government and the last one. It covers up the lack of social mobility and gives people a false impression of the benefits of further and higher education and the level of income and status people will receive as a consequence of certain jobs.

Being a secretary is never going to be equivalent to being a doctor. There may be some overlap between the responsibility and pay of a top PA and the most junior doctor, but the same is not going to be true when looking at the average secretary and the average doctor. I think young women need to be aware of this when looking at careers.

I think that's true Milly. I think lots of people, young or not, don't have much sense of how much certain jobs actually pay and make huge assumptions based on the class associations of those jobs. Eg. my SIL's BIL is in the police and SIL's dad initially made a fuss about what a bad, low-paid job it was. He assumes my brother is better off because he works for a charity and that sounds middle-class, but he's really off-mark about how much BIL and my brother each earn.

I don't think being honest is belittling people in fact, as several have pointed out, it is actually dishonest to encourage someone to believe they are in a profession when they are quite plainly not.

The particular point made above about graduates and expectations is an example of this.

I think milly is right. A few years back some survey showed that 75% of people thought of themselves as middle class. That blatantly can't be true. Marx would turn in his grave to see how the masses are appeased by relatively little material wealth.

There used to be the definition that middle class meant owning the means if production e.g. A factory owner would be mc, their secretary would be working class.

Then economics changed and a bigger group of 'professionals' grew up. These people all had degrees and/or years of training. So they became accepted as mc, but we're seen as separated from the wc class as often they ran/owned a company (partners in a legal firm, head teachers etc).

Part of the problem is that there's a vast difference between a typist Kind of secretary and a running the company one, but the same word is used. If you're a company secretary, you have power and influence.

Fwiw in the US the word administrator is more like the old secretary. The admin staff at a school are the principal and people who run it