Women in Business
Business men and heads of government departments have sometimes said to me that they have tried women clerks, found them unsatisfactory, and have given up the experiment. Their objections are, that women are inclined to ask and accept favors, and to excuse themselves for short comings and that they, the employers, find it difficult, or unpleasant to “bring women to time,” and demand the exact and prompt performance by them of all their duties, such as would be required of a man in the same place.
There is no excuse for any woman who takes this line of action, when she has secured work. She should know that every time she asks for a half hour’s leave of absence, every time she comes into the office late, every time she excuses herself with a smile, or worse yet, a tear for some piece of carelessness, she is injuring not only her own changes of earning a livelihood, but those of all other women who have to go out into the world to earn bread.
But I have never failed, when opportunity offered, to point out to those who so frankly, gave me their objections to women clerks, that upon the employers themselves rested fully half of the responsibility for the failure. To my question, “Did you really take pains to engage an intelligent, industrious woman, expecting of her the same work you would have expected of a man, and letting her know it, and did you offer the wages ordinarily paid to a man, with the understanding that she should do the same work as would have been required of a man in the same place?” The reluctant answer has nearly always been “No.”
He who expects little of a servant will get little usually and he who gives half pay will get half service. For the hundreds of women who have at some time in their lives worked, in a slip shod fashion, in some office for a little while, all the time kindly treated by their employers, but who found themselves suddenly dismissed some bright morning, without explanation it may be, these objections to women clerks, made by friendly men, often, should furnish food for reflection. And as for the hundreds of officials and business men who have at some period in their lives engaged some woman to work for them because she would work cheaper than a man, and then never clearly explained her duties to her, expecting and demanding very little of her, excusing her faults and carelessness, until at last, with patience worn out, they have discharged her without telling her the reason, and then ever after avowed that “women are no good in an office” – is there not something for them to think of, too?
Ada C. Sweet
Cambridge Chronicle
May 21, 1887
The Cambridge Room 