A movie night featuring The Office Wife (1930), The Best of Everything (1959) and 9 to 5 (1980)—plus an episode or two of modern TV series The Office—reveals fairly consistent representations of highly sexualized workplaces full of temptations, flirtations and office romances over the last century, writes historian Julie Berebitsky in her new book Sex and the Office: A History Of Gender, Power, and Desire.
Berebitsky takes a thorough look back at sexuality and gender dynamics in the white-collar office over the last 150 years, beginning in the 1860s when women first took jobs in the U.S. Treasury office. From fears that men would run away with their secretaries to the notion that women were both vulnerable to and manipulative of men’s desire at work, the author concludes that when it comes to sex and the office little has changed in the last 150 years.
Julie Berebitsky: Even though we now have women making up half of the labor force, even though women are in executive positions, even though we have sexual harassment laws on the books, relatively little has changed in terms of attitudes toward sex in the office. There still seems to be the belief that women use and lie about sex, creating a distrust of women. There is a corresponding belief that access to women in the office is a natural perk for successful businessmen–that boys will be boys. There’s been a surprising amount of continuity over the last 150 years.
Has anything changed?
We do now have sexual harassment laws. From the time women first entered the labor force, some number experienced exploitative overtures. They were told: Put out or get out. Now there is recourse for women who find themselves in that position. Another big change is now we have women executives. It used to be that when there was a consensual relationship in the office and something went wrong, because the woman was always in the subordinate position, the problem was easily solved. You’d just fire the woman who is a secretary or something low-level. Now those are much more difficult problems to solve.
Have sexual harassment laws been beneficial to women?
Even with sexual harassment laws, lots of women decide it is better to find a way to deal with it rather than risk your career or occupational progress by coming forward. Just a couple of months ago on the Dear Prudence advice column, her advice was: Expect sexual harassment and stay cool about it. That’s the advice that women have been receiving since the early 20th century. Even though we have the law, most women don’t avail themselves of it. More surprising, it seems to be professional women who say: Wow, better just to figure this out on my own or find another job because bringing a charge is likely to hurt my career.
How often does harassment go unreported?
It’s impossible to know how many women and men are being sexually harassed. The EEOC receives 11,000 to 12,000 complaints each year, and only about half of those are determined to have cause. What we do know is that quid pro quo sexual harassment—the “hey baby if you want this job, this promotion, this raise then do X, Y or Z”—has really declined. Sexual harassment laws are less effective in dealing with what’s referred to as a hostile environment.
In your book, you suggest that women were expected to be the keepers of sexual propriety in the workplace. Why is the responsibility on them?
That’s historically true. We still see some of that today. In the 19th century when women first entered the office, there’s still a belief that the ideal middle-class woman is passionless and without sexual desire. In society and in the office, it is the woman who is expected to be the gatekeeper. Even today, when I talked to women in their 50s and 60s, they still had the attitude that a woman must have done something to ‘bring this on’ and ‘men will be men.’ Younger men and women don’t feel that way, but there is something of a generational divide.
You also highlight that women are often seen in extremes—either as victims of men’s desire or manipulative tramps. That doesn’t seem fair.
Historically, it goes back to the notion of female passionlessness. A lot of people were skeptical about middle-class, unmarried women being alone in the office all day with a strange man. Some thought that women were vulnerable and would be victimized. Others said only a woman who wasn’t very virtuous would even consider getting a job. It led to the dichotomy: Is she a victim or a vamp?
In the 1920s, middle-class women regain their desire. Once you have that sexual understanding of womanhood again, the concern about women as victims really vanishes–but that means they’re on their own and need to learn how to ‘handle’ men. Meanwhile there’s greater sympathy for men beginning in the 1920s and ‘30s with the rise of psychology and explanations that men are going through a mid-life crisis. They’re losing their hair, there are these women around and one way to bolster their ego is to pursue these women. When presented as a midlife crisis, that means it’s temporary, it’ll pass, they don’t mean it and so society shouldn’t see it as a social problem.
Where does this narrative of “boys being boys”—of men having greater sexual desire and not being able to control that desire very well—come from?
In the U.S. from the 19th century on there’s a notion that men have a sexual drive that is really difficult to control. If they could control it, that was a sign that they could be successful. In the 20th century, the idea of masculinity that is based in sexual conquests becomes dominant. In the 2008 financial scandal, all of these stories came out about various stock brokerage firms where men were spending lots of money on prostitutes and going to strip clubs. Even though we now acknowledge women as sexual, we still have a sexual double standard—the idea that some of these women use sex, so aren’t they just as bad? Aren’t they sluts?
I’ve spoken with sociologist Catherine Hakim about her theory that women have more erotic capital and should use it to their advantage. Do you agree with her?
No. It really contributes to this distrust of women in the workplace. The distinction here is what is good for individual women versus women as a whole. Certainly individual women can benefit by using their attractiveness, but it hurts women as a group because it says women are not using their talent but something illegitimate to advance. I believe women are every bit as intelligent and capable and qualified as men, and they don’t need to use their sexual attractiveness.
I would like to see men not use golf. It’s naïve to think personal relationships can be kept out of the labor force, but we should make an effort to try to have as much of a merit system as possible. Given the historic distrust of women and belief that women are vamps who will abuse men’s sexual vulnerability, any time a woman is seen as using sex it doesn’t help women in the long term.
As women have increasingly moved into professional jobs and executive positions, have power dynamics shifted? Do you think they are considered equal in the office?
We’re not at equal because longstanding understandings of gender still put women at a disadvantage. Gender stereotypes are still very prevalent, [like the idea that] you either slept your way to the top or you are winning ugly, meaning you’re too unattractive to get a man and are successful because you devoted all your time to your career. That’s why the idea that women should use their erotic capital is a bad one; it breathes life into these stereotypes.
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