The re-creation and perpetuation of the secretarial myth

More than two million women in England and Wales are currently employed as clerical workers. Over 747,000 workers are designated typists, shorthand writers or secretaries, of whom men comprise only 1.4 per cent. (1) Relatively few office workers receive either in-service training or day release and the vast majority of new entrants to the occupation have either learnt appropriate office skills as an integral part of their secondary education or taken a full-time secretarial course at a technical college. The high proportion of female students who elect to study secretarial subjects in full-time further education is impressive. In 1977 approximately one-third of all girl school leavers, without GCE A levels, who proceeded to fulL-time study, went directly into secretarial training. In addition, secretarial courses were the third most popular choice of course for girls with GCE A level qualifications. In 1977 only 600 boys chose to study on full-time secretarial courses, none of whom had achieved GCE A level qualifications at school. (2) Secretarial work therefore exemplifies the sexual division of labour and this is reflected in the gender specificity of students’ training programmes.