Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utcsri.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsri!clarke 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