The Secretarial Ghetto: Myth or Reality? A Study of Secretarial Work in England, France and Germany

Catherine J. G. Truss
Additional contact information
Catherine J. G. Truss: Centre for Organisational Research at the London Business School

Work, Employment & Society, 1993, vol. 7, issue 4, 561-584

Abstract: This paper reports the findings of a study on secretarial work in England, France and Germany, which aimed to discover whether secretarial work can justly be described as a female `ghetto' occupation. Questionnaires were issued to secretaries working in matched management consultancy and publishing firms in the three countries; 185 questionnaires were received and 61 interviews were carried out with bosses, secretaries and personnel representatives. It was found that promotion out of secretarial work is extremely rare, which corroborates the `ghetto' thesis. However, secretarial job content, especially in France and Germany, was found to be wide-ranging and varied, which runs counter to that thesis. Overall, conflicting evidence was found across the three countries, which suggests that women's work is not necessarily constructed in the same way in different countries, and points to the role played by national institutions in shaping patterns and experiences of women's employment.

Date: 1993
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/095001709374003 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:7:y:1993:i:4:p:561-584

DOI: 10.1177/095001709374003

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().