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From: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Re: egg/chicken chicken/egg chigg/eckin
Message-ID: <1244@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Jul-85 09:38:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1244
Posted: Thu Jul 11 09:38:06 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 09:42:42 EDT
References: <893@mnetor.UUCP> <5642@utzoo.UUCP> <896@mnetor.UUCP>
Reply-To: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 28
Summary: 

Jim Robinson (hope I've got my attribution right this time!) responds to
Sophie Quigley by saying that all women now have the opportunity to become
EE's, doctors, lawyers, plumbers, etc., and don't have to become secretaries
any more.

I think this is a little beside the point, which is that secretarying is a
job of low prestige and low pay, largely because "even a woman can do it".
(That's a generic quotation, not attributable to any individual in this
newsgroup.)  100 or so years ago, being somebody's secretary was special:
you checked his mail (yup: "his", of course), wrote his simpler corres-
pondence, vetted his visitors, set up his timetable, and so on.  All the
things secretaries do, in fact.  But because you were generally a man,
secretarying had high prestige and high pay.  Pay you less than the gardener?
Horrors!  You're a gentleman, and the gardener's not.  The janitor?!  Give
me a nineteenth-century break!

Much as I am proud of my university and universities in general as a manifesta-
tion of western civilization, and glad though I am that I personally received
a university education (I'd make a lousy gardener or plumber), still I do not
think that higher education should be the standard route to improvement for
a group as a whole.  Should women who want to do better go to university?
Yes.  Should women as a group all go to university as the means to women's
betterment?  Certainly not.

-- Jim Clarke
   Undergraduate Secretary  (<-- see what I mean?)
   Dept of Computer Science
   University of Toronto