The arrival of women in the office

The typewriter is almost obsolete in the modern office. But it played a crucial role in women's arrival in the workplace, explains Lucy Kellaway.

In 1887, Rudyard Kipling met one of the new breed of typewriting girls while visiting San Francisco.

They aroused in him a mixture of fear and fascination, insisting that their work was enjoyable and their "natural fate" - that was until Kipling questioned further.

"Well, and after?" said I. "What happens?"
"We work for our bread."
"Till you die?"
"Ye-es, unless," said the partner in the firm audaciously, "sometimes we marry our employers - at least that's what the newspapers say."
The hand banged on half a dozen of the keys of the machine at once. "Yes, I don't care. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!"
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In offices today almost all the most boring tasks are done by women. At the photocopier, at the filing cabinet (or its digital equivalent) and on the reception desk - it's females only. So much so that when a few years ago I came across my first male PA I was almost as shocked as Kipling.

This feminisation of office work happened incredibly fast. Until the late 19th Century there were no women in offices at all. In 1870, there were barely a thousand of them. By 1911 there were 125,000 and by 1961 there were 1.8 million, in 2001 there were 2.5 million female clerks.

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