How did we wind up back in the Mad Men era at work?
This question, posed recently by Guardian columnist Lucia Graves, is one that repeatedly surfaced while I was writing my latest book, published in April. I Love You Today is a novel loosely based on my years working in publishing and advertising in New York City in the mid-to-late 1960s.
As I was writing the book, headlines about scandals at Fox News, Saatchi & Saatchi and other well-known media and advertising companies served as frequent reminders that gender discrimination and sexual harassment are hardly a thing of the past. Surveys from two trade organizations, the 3% Conference and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (the 4A’s), provided further evidence: more than 50% of women surveyed reported having experienced sexual harassment at least once. For all the strides women have made in the workplace in the past 50 years, it’s clear that we haven’t come all that long a way, baby.
I’m not fond of the phrase “women’s roles” as it reinforces the idea that we are expected to behave in a particular way because of gender, but it is hard to deny that gender-based stereotypes and opportunities have always been a part of our world. Witness the one in three women who told the 4A’s that they had “not received desired assignments or promotions at least a few times because of discrimination” and the 42% who said they had “not been included in decision-making because of discrimination.”
When I arrived in New York City in 1963, the assumption that I would become a secretary was practically a given, despite my degree from Rhode Island School of Design. In those days, the prescribed roles for women on Madison Avenue did not include jobs in an ad agency’s art department. The excuses I was given varied, but the worst came from a senior partner in a prestigious agency who said they had never hired a girl because “the boys in the bullpen,” where assistants typically began, would feel inhibited about cursing in front of a girl and consequently their work would suffer. I was frustrated, but the phrase “gender discrimination” was not in my vocabulary. Not then. It was the way things were.
After turning down several secretarial jobs, I was hired as an assistant art director at Bride’s magazine, which put me on the path to becoming an art director. As I gained experience and seniority over the course of my career, I was treated with more respect, but dismissive attitudes lingered. In the ‘70s, I founded a boutique advertising agency with a female partner. When we merged many years later with a larger agency run by men, it didn’t take long to realize that we’d been brought in as token female creative executives. I was invited to many meetings for which I was neither prepped nor had any reason to attend — except for the fact that I was female.
The ’60s were a time of cultural upheaval and new freedoms, which allowed many of us to defy stereotypes. To an increasing extent over those decades, we choose not to automatically accept what we were told, but instead to make our own decisions and determine our own paths. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that gender-based discrimination is ever present, and I’m afraid that women in the workforce today will have to summon the confidence to make their own rules—and roles—just as we did fifty years ago.