Sex and the Office, Second Edition
A History of Gender, Power, and Desire
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
This transformative book examines men’s and women’s changing attitudes toward sex and gender in the US workplace. Between 1870 and 1970, white-collar office work became the leading form of employment for American women. As more and more women took office jobs, men and women workers attempted to make sense of this new environment where the workplace became a site of gendered power negotiations: Emotional and sexual desires entangled with “rational” operating procedures.
Drawing on a wide range of primary sources including government investigation reports, scandal papers, memoirs, and advice literature, Julie Berebitsky describes how women perceived and responded to male desire and discrimination in the office. She also offers keen insight into how popular media—cartoons, advertisements, and a wide array of fictional accounts—represented wanted and unwelcome romantic and sexual advances in the workplace.
Now in paperback for the first time, this compelling edition includes a foreword that brings Berebitsky’s work into the present, where the Trump presidencies, #MeToo movement, and global pandemic provide striking illustrations of the book’s enduring relevance. An afterword reflects on Berebitsky’s lasting impact as a feminist, teacher, and scholar in the fields of labor history and women’s studies.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword to the Second Edition
- Acknowledgments for the Second Edition
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. Dangers, Desires, and Self-Determination: Competing Narratives of the Sexual Culture of the New, Gender-Integrated Office
- 2. White-Collar Casanovas: Gender, Class, and (Hetero)sexuality in the Office, 1861 to World War II
- 3. Betwixt and Between: New Freedoms and New Risks in the Sexually and Psychologically Modern Office
- 4. Gold Diggers, Innocents, and Tempted Wives: The Skyscraper in Fiction and Film
- 5. Morals and Morale: Managing Sex in Business, World War II to the Early 1960s
- 6. The White-Collar Revolution: Helen Gurley Brown, Sex, and a New Model of Working Womanhood
- 7. Desire or Discrimination? Old Narratives Meet a New Interpretation
- 8. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Wanted and Unwelcome Advances After “Sexual Harassment”
- Conclusion
- Afterword to the Second Edition
- Notes
- Index