Sex and the office : a history of gender, power, and desire / Julie Berebitsky ; with a new foreword by Katherine Turk and a new afterword by Katherine Parkin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berebitsky, Julie, Author.

Contributor:

Turk, Katherine, writer of foreword.

Parkin, Katherine J., writer of afterword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex role in the work environment--United States--History--20th century.

Sex role in the work environment.

Sexual harassment--United States--History--20th century.

Sexual harassment.

Women--Employment--United States--History--20th century.

Women.

Women employees--United States--Social conditions--20th century.

Women employees.

Sex role--History.

Women--Employment.

Women employees--History.

United States.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 370 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2025]

Summary:

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Dangers, desires, and self-determination: competing narratives of the sexual culture of the new, gender-integrated office

White-collar Casanovas: gender, class, and (hetero)sexuality in the office, 1861 to World War II

Betwixt and between: new freedoms and new risks in the sexually and psychologically modern office

Gold diggers, innocents, and tempted wives: the skyscraper in fiction and film

Morals and morale: managing sex in business, World War II to the early 1960s

The white-collar revolution: Helen Gurley Brown, sex, and a new model of working womanhood

Desire or discrimination? Old narratives meet a new interpretation

Two steps forward, one step back: wanted and unwelcome advances after "sexual harassment."

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-360) and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781469691411

1469691418

OCLC:

1512301068

Publisher Number:

90102767466

CIPO000265756