Katharine Gibbs

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Katharine Gibbs , born Katharine Ryan , (born January 10, 1863 in Galena , Illinois , † 1934 ) was the founder and for years the director of the Gibbs Schools, higher technical schools, which specialized in the training of secretaries . In the US , graduates of these schools became known for their professional demeanor - they were known as the Katie Gibbs Girls . Katharine Gibbs, herself an entrepreneur, was aware of the limited career opportunities of her graduates. She herself stated in 1924:

"A woman's career path suffers from a lack of opportunities, from unfair competition from men, from prejudice and, last but not least, from unfair salaries and a lack of recognition."

Life

Katharine Ryan was born in Galena. Her father was a successful merchant who made sure that she was educated in a girls boarding school in New England . This was to ensure that she received a broad general education. She then graduated from the Manhattanville Convent of the Sacred Heart , a convent school in New York City . In 1896 she married William Gibbs. The couple had two sons before William Gibbs was killed in a boat accident in 1909. Katharine Gibbs first tried to make a living for her family by sewing clothes, but failed. She then enrolled at Simms College in Boston for a shorthand stenography course in which foreign languages ​​were also taught as a minor. Graduates of this course could hope to be hired by companies that wanted their secretaries to be cosmopolitan.

Katharine Gibbs' unmarried sister Mary Ryan enrolled in the Providence School for Secretaries in Providence Rhode Island , a private school for the training of secretaries, in 1910 , and also became an assistant teacher at the school. The owner of the secretarial school Mary Ryan attended offered her the school for sale in 1911, and Mary Ryan and Katharine Gibbs decided to jointly buy the school for $ 1,000. Mary Ryan would teach there and Katharine would manage the school. They changed the curriculum to focus less on shorthand than on general secretarial duties, with Gibbs drawing inspiration from her own training. The two sisters founded the school at a very favorable time. In North America, the first pure secretarial schools had already emerged in the 1890s , when more and more young women tried to earn their own living and the profession of stenographer, work in a writing pool or even the work of a secretary became increasingly accepted for women at the same time the number of office workers rose: in 1870, of 80,000 office workers in the United States, only 3 percent were women. In 1920 there were a total of three million office workers and of these nearly half were female. Women very soon ousted men from some areas of work. Shorthand was one of those areas of responsibility: the record dictation and his writing was considered a simple task demanded no initiative and women seemed sure to former idea about gender roles are particularly suitable. But secretarial work, which was regarded as more demanding, was soon assigned predominantly to women. A sociologist who investigated the occupations in which women were employed in the Cleveland area in 1925 found that only railroad companies and utilities still employed men as secretaries.

Katherine Gibbs School's curriculum included typing , shorthand, office procedures and telephone techniques, as well as law, math and English. Later, the subjects were production management , employer-employee relations, financial management , accounting and current affairs added. The curriculum also included demeanor and appearance, with less emphasis on sex appeal than on professional appearance. Graduating secretaries were advised to use cosmetics and jewelry sparingly, wear dresses rather than skirts and blouses, and were encouraged to wear hats and gloves outdoors. But you should also be able to master all office situations with charm and style. In her history of the secretarial profession, Lynn Peril calls this school with its high demands on applicants - at least a high school diploma was required - and its notoriously tough training as the "Harvard School" of secretaries, but at the same time mocks its graduates as office geishas.

During the First World War , when the employment of women increased particularly strongly, the school expanded very strongly. Gibbs founded branches of Gibbs College near the most prestigious American universities, which belonged to the so-called Ivy League . Gibbs founded a branch in Boston and one in New York City in 1918.

Aftermath

After the death of Katharine Gibbs, her son Gordon Gibbs took over the management of the school and founded further branches. Towards the end of the 1960s, when the profession of secretary increasingly became a symbol of specifically female disadvantage, the technical schools that went back to Katharine Gibbs' founding of schools became the target of individual protests. In 1970, 60 women occupied the entrance hall of the Katharine Gibbs School in Manhattan to protest against the fact that training in such secretarial schools only prepares women for a serving role in professional life. In 1980, however, the Christian Science Monitor praised the schools as a haven of tradition, even if the schools now allowed their pupils to wear jeans two days a year and their pupils also included those who would later be managers in companies wanted to work. The last branches of the schools now operating under the names "Gibbs College" and Katie Gibbs School closed in 2009.

literature

  • Nikil Saval: Cubed - A Secret History of the Workplace . Doubleday, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-385-53658-5 .
  • Lynn Peril: Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making It in the Office. WW Norton & Company, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-393-33854-6

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Nikil Saval: Cubed - A Secret History of the Workplace . Doubleday, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-385-53658-5 ., Chapter: The White-Blouse Revolution , Ebook-Position 1543. The original quote reads A Woman's career is blocked by lack of openings, by unjust male competition , by prejudice and, not least, by inadequate salary and recognition.
  2. ^ How Katie Gibbs became office word , The Hour , May 29, 1986
  3. ↑ Nikil Saval: Cubed - A Secret History of the Workplace . Doubleday, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-385-53658-5 ., Chapter: The White-Blouse Revolution , Ebook item 1537.
  4. ↑ Nikil Saval: Cubed - A Secret History of the Workplace . Doubleday, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-385-53658-5 ., Chapter: The White-Blouse Revolution , Ebook item 1235.
  5. ↑ Nikil Saval: Cubed - A Secret History of the Workplace . Doubleday, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-385-53658-5 ., Chapter: The White-Blouse Revolution , Ebook item 1243
  6. ^ Lynn Peril: Swimming in the Steno Pool . Chapter Stepping Stone or Millstone? . Ebook position 3089.
  7. ↑ Nikil Saval: Cubed - A Secret History of the Workplace . Doubleday, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-385-53658-5 ., Chapter: The White-Blouse Revolution , Ebook item 1543.
  8. ^ Lynn Peril: Swimming in the Steno Pool . Chapter So You Want to Be a Secretary . Ebook positions 749 and 796.
  9. ↑ "How Katie Gibbs wurde office word" , The Hour , May 29, 1986
  10. ↑ Lynn Kear, John Rossman, Kay Francis: A Passionate Life And Career (Google eBook) (McFarland, 2006), pg. 18-19
  11. ^ Lynn Peril: Swimming in the Steno Pool. Chapter Stepping Stone or Millstone: The Liberated Secratary. Ebook position 3467.
personal data
SURNAME Gibbs, Katharine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ryan, Katharine (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder and for many years director of the Gibbs schools, higher technical schools
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Galena , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH 1934