11 Tips on How to Handle Women Employees From 1943

[Ping898]

http://www.roadandtravel.com/roadhumor/1943transportation.htm

The following is an excerpt from the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine. This was quite serious at its time and written for male supervisors of women in the work force during World War II - a mere 58 years ago!

Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject:

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters. They are less likely to be flirtatious. They need the work, or they would not be doing it. They still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It is always well to impress upon older women, the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even-tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but also reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses that would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

5. Stress, at the outset, the importance of time; the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.

6. Give the female employee a definite daylong schedule of duties so that they will keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.

7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they cannot shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.

10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she will grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.

11. Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point cannot be stressed too much in keeping women happy.

 

[Kembudo-Kai Kempoka]

I don't see a problem with it. Sounds like good advice for managing fickle women then, now, and in the future.

 

[Sukerkin]

I do have to say ... "And ... ?".

I may be middle-aged and thus, de facto, a reactionary dinosaur, but I don't see anything harmful in that advice at all. Well, perhaps, number four with it's emphasis on female weaknesses is a bit much for todays tastes but the removal of that gender specific proviso eliminates the offense.

I've shared feminine compatriots in the working environment for a few decades now and the one thing I can say with any certainty is that they do not want to be 'one of the guys'. They most assuredly don't want some of the more 'objectified' attitudes applied to them but they also have no desire to be treated as a man.

For myself, I can only say that the prescence of women in the workplace is a positive thing. They, by the simple fact of being in earshot, reduce the amount of profanity {sometimes not } and other objectionable behaviour and also allow for the genuine pleasure of seeing and interacting wth something more attractive than a computer during the days labour.

Is this 'sexist'?

I would imagine that it is under the current ultra-feminist shroud that pollutes all male-female relations in the present day.

Is it impolite or sexist that a man will tell another man to "**** off!" but will not say the same to a woman under the same circumstances? Well, assuredly. yes. But that's a legacy of a long history of 'rougher' tones with our fellows that bears an entirely different cargo dependant on the gender of the person to which the abusive term is directed.

The modern world, as differentiated from the slighty-post-industrial world of the '40's, needs to stop this homegenisation of the sexes that sees women trying to out-drink, out-swear, out-smoke and out-et-al their male counterparts.

It's destructive in an of itself to the ladies in our midst and subtracts a valuable 'brake' on behaviour that we all need to keep things civil and moderately polite.

At the bottom line, men and women are different. No amount of legislation will change that in the long term. What we need is a way for both sexes to contribute their strengths to making society work. Anything else is wishful thinking and sophistry.

 

[exile]

There's more than a few parts of that advice that have to qualify as quaint, from our modern point of view. But to put it in perspective, try to find a comparable document written ten or twelve years later; you'd be struck by how fair-minded and even enlightened the earlier recommendations are, compared to the attitudes of the stifling, suburban 1950s, when being a `good American' was almost synonymous with conformism and the idea of women sharing a workplace with men—or even being in the workplace to begin with—was an abomination.

The early 1940s was the era of Rosie the Riveter, don't forget, when women were justly perceived as absolutely crucial to the war effort and recognition of their contribution was generous. At the airshow I went to over the weekend, there were a number of references by the announcers to the WASPs—the Women Airforce Service Pilots—a group of expert pilots (who happened to be women) who flew thousands of planes to Ports of Embarkation for delivery to the European forward theatres. They were well respected by their male counterparts, and it was only after the war that their accomplishments were minimized, to the point where many Americans never heard of them; Barry Goldwater played an important part in pressuring Congress to recognize their status as full military veterans. The Wiki article on them has this to say:

Regardless of their many accomplishments since their deactivation, the most important WASP legacy is their contribution as military pilots during World War II. Because of the pioneering and the expertise they demonstrated in successfully flying every type of military aircraft, from the fastest fighters to the heaviest bombers, the WASP blazed a trail for women of future generations to follow. The WASP had proven conclusively that female pilots, when given the same training as male pilots, are just as capable as men.​

The important thing about the WASPs in this context is that during the early 1940s, no one was in any doubt about the crucial value of the women military pilots' contributions to the war, or more generally about women workers' ability to rise to the toughest of occasions. It was only during what Edmund Wilson called `the haunted 50s', the era of McCarthy and grey flannel suits, that we began to see a 180º sea change in the perception of women's capabilities.

 

[Touch Of Death]

http://www.roadandtravel.com/roadhumor/1943transportation.htm

This is good advice for any employee.
Sean

 

[Steel Tiger]

There's more than a few parts of that advice that have to qualify as quaint, from our modern point of view. But to put it in perspective, try to find a comparable document written ten or twelve years later; you'd be struck by how fair-minded and even enlightened the earlier recommendations are, compared to the attitudes of the stifling, suburban 1950s, when being a `good American' was almost synonymous with conformism and the idea of women sharing a workplace with men—or even being in the workplace to begin with—was an abomination.

That is what struck me.

The war years were a time of improvement for women, though it didn't last. As you say the '50s were abyssmal, but I can see the forces at work. During the war women in the work force were a necessity so that men could be packed off to fight. After the war, all those men were coming home and society felt obliged to employ them again (Man in the Grey Flannel Suit looks at this very well) and women were the ones to suffer.

 

[Jade Tigress]

http://www.roadandtravel.com/roadhumor/1943transportation.htm

:lfao::lfao::lfao::lfao::lfao::lfao::lfao::lfao:


Riiiiiiight. :shrug:

 

[exile]

That is what struck me.

The war years were a time of improvement for women, though it didn't last. As you say the '50s were abyssmal, but I can see the forces at work. During the war women in the work force were a necessity so that men could be packed off to fight. After the war, all those men were coming home and society felt obliged to employ them again (Man in the Grey Flannel Suit looks at this very well) and women were the ones to suffer.

That's exactly my reading of the change in the postwar situation. And yes, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit was brilliant in its analysis of that whole dynamic. The problem for TMITGFS and similar work is that it's so tightly wound up with a period in history that fewer and fewer people are interested in or have any connection to. No one who didn't live through that era can have a sense of how suffocating the period was, and how much fear people experienced at the prospect of being perceived as the slightest bit `different' from anyone else.... with ostracism as the best outcome and blacklisting as a Communist or, at least, a `fellow traveller' always a possibility. A very, very scary time... maybe that's why people are so quick to forget that particular decade...

 

[Steel Tiger]

That's exactly my reading of the change in the postwar situation. And yes, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit was brilliant in its analysis of that whole dynamic. The problem for TMITGFS and similar work is that it's so tightly wound up with a period in history that fewer and fewer people are interested in or have any connection to. No one who didn't live through that era can have a sense of how suffocating the period was, and how much fear people experienced at the prospect of being perceived as the slightest bit `different' from anyone else.... with ostracism as the best outcome and blacklisting as a Communist or, at least, a `fellow traveller' always a possibility. A very, very scary time... maybe that's why people are so quick to forget that particular decade...

The Korean War, McCarthyism, the nuclear proliferation issue, and all the social issues arising from the baby-boomer period. Its not surprising that people seek to forget the '50s. But to forget is to repeat, so it is necessary to remember and examine all the periods of history, especially with regard as to how part of the population was treated, in order to avoid doing these things again.

 

[exile]

The Korean War, McCarthyism, the nuclear proliferation issue, and all the social issues arising from the baby-boomer period. Its not surprising that people seek to forget the '50s. But to forget is to repeat, so it is necessary to remember and examine all the periods of history, especially with regard as to how part of the population was treated, in order to avoid doing these things again.

Yes, and there's now enough of a wedge of history between that time and the present that it may finally be possible to look back at the era with something like historical detachment. It was a very strange period in American history; the seeds of the ferociously divisive 1960s and after were already being sewn then, and one could see the 1950s as, in part, an epic effort at denial—of racial conflicts, of issues about gender that the war had decisively brought into the light (as per the issues raised in this thread's OP), and, especially, about the antagonistic aspects of the relationship between elected government and the electorate that the Vietnam War wound up shoving into the foreground beyond any hope of disguising. Sort of like the Florida Coastline an hour or so before a Category 5 hurricane makes landfall. Deadly calm seeming, but things are definitely not quite right... everyone knows it, too.

By comparison, the 1940s were remarkably harmonious, with solidarity and goodwill very much in evidence. Clearly that was the influence of the war effort, but it also showed how much the greater threat to humanity, the horror of Naziism, was able to keep lurking domestic contradictions in the background. Once that threat was snuffed out, though, a lot of old issues in their modern avatars came back to haunt us... and voilà, the '50s.

 

[arnisador]

Sheesh!

 

[Steel Tiger]

Sheesh!

Sorry to put you off.

We'll try to tone it down a notch.