Suburban Womanhood: Gender Implications in Pastoral Capitalism
by Leidy Sanchez
The exodus of corporations from the city center and into the suburban periphery beginning in the 1950s held gendered implications that contradicted traditional suburban ideals of domesticity, and at the same time encouraged gendered divisions of labor. The employment of women in these new suburban corporate offices challenged stereotypes of women in the home by allowing them to become participants in the corporate institution, while simultaneously entrenching existing suburban gender roles through labor and wage disparities.
Gendered Labor Divisions in the Corporate Suburban Office
The expanding feminized labor market in the suburbs was an important determinant in the relocation of corporations to the periphery. Post-World War II, growing companies required large clerical staffs to fulfill necessary administrative functions, and white, middle-class, educated women were often the preferred labor force to fulfill these positions.[1] Middle-class white families continued to leave the city for the suburbs, causing the supply of what corporations viewed as “high-quality” staff—that is, white and middle-class—to diminish in city centers.[2] Cities were increasingly becoming more ethnically and racially diverse, as the non-white and Puerto Rican population continued to rapidly increase in urban centers. For instance, in New York City alone the non-white and Puerto Rican population increased by twenty-seven percent from 1950 to 1957, and as expressed in aFortune article in 1967, “some companies are reluctant to hire a large proportion of Negro and Puerto Rican Help.”[3]
New York corporations partly rationalized their exodus from the urban center and emphasized the importance of a corporate estate based on the need for staff and the unsuitable, diverse, and working class clerical labor force in the city.[4] According to social geographer Kirstin Nelson, clerical labor is a “locational determinant” which would prompt a company to relocate based on the availability of labor, as clerical labor is generally the largest segment of the corporate labor force.[5] Women often represented the large majority of the clerical labor and overall employee population in suburban offices and corporate estates. For example, during the late 1950’s the General Foods corporate estate in White Plains, New York, employed 2,000 workers, and 1,600 were women in clerical positions.[6]
How Corporate Offices Entrenched Traditional Gender Roles
The suburbs contained the ideal clerical workforce for companies. It offered a large supply of white, middle-class, educated women and excluded what was considered ‘undesirable ethnic groups,’ which were often restricted to urban cities. For these corporations, employing women as their largest occupational labor group offered added advantages over hiring men. For one, it allowed companies to pay lower wages because women were often secondary earners, while the husbands remained the primary bread winners of the household.[7] The high-wage, managerial positions within the corporations were dominated by males, while the low-wage, clerical positions were dominated by females. For women, wage differentials reinforced the idea that the home was their primary responsibility and work was secondary. In 1969, women in the United States earned a median of $3,100 while men earned $7,300.[8] Although wage differences between genders can be attributed to the type of employment performed, even in the same profession, males earned higher wages than females. For example, in 1966, clerical female workers earned a median income of $5,460, in contrast to male clerical workers who earned a median of $6,880; even in a female dominated occupation such as clerical work, men got paid more than women. [9]
Second, the patriarchal suburban power structure of the home, where the woman was expected to be subordinate to the man, complemented the hierarchical system of managerial capitalism in the pastoral capitalist structure, which required a “docile female labor supply” that was easy to manage.[10] Worker docility combined with the peripheral location of suburban corporate offices also reduced the chances of female unionization, often prevalent in the city center, since it separated women from influential urban networks. Lastly, suburban married women were regarded as more reliable and stable workers because they tended to have families and most likely owned their home.[11]
Income and gender highly limited the mobility of the female clerical staff in the suburbs. Corporate offices benefited from female constraints of suburban living and low-wage clerical occupations, which compelled women to efficiently balance household responsibilities with employment.[12] Women were still expected to fulfill their domestic duties in the home and generally preferred a shorter commute to work. A New York Times article from 1982 captures these sentiments as a suburban secretary states, “when I decided to go to work… the most important consideration was being able to get my children quickly in case of an emergency. I travel only 20 minutes to work thus have more time for myself and my family.”[13] This outlook was advantageous to corporate offices because it resulted in greater employee satisfaction, lower labor costs, increased employee productivity and a decrease in turnover rates.[14] On the other hand, stereotypes of women as domestic and docile encouraged gendered divisions of labor that maintained women in clerical, low-wage jobs and men in the managerial, high-wage occupations within suburban corporate offices for some time. Corporate management utilized traditional distinctions of male and female jobs to determine career advancement opportunities in the work place.[15]
How Pastoral Capitalism Challenged Traditional Gender Roles
Ironically, the suburban corporate office was also ideal for women’s suburban lifestyle. While suburban women were expected to remain in the private sphere, corporate offices offered them opportunity to participate in the public sphere without social backlash. The corporate office created an environment that added to the suburban woman’s standard of living and at the same time allowed her to attend to her domestic duties. This came from the offices’ proximity to the home and the amenities often available in suburban headquarters, including recreational areas, security and comfort. A suburban mother and corporate office worker for Ebasco Service Inc, a corporation that held its headquarters in the suburbs of Lynhurst, New Jersey until the 1990’s, expressed these sentiments in a 1982 New York Times article as she stated, “Ebasco’s emphasis on employee relations made me feel like my work was appreciated. I also have a recreation club, exercise club… available to me. Going to work has actually improved the quality of my life.”[16]
Even with low-wage employment, women were able to earn their own income, contribute to the household, and to the upward mobility of their suburban middle-class families. The additional income allowed the family to participate in leisure activities and consumption that symbolized status. [17] The same New York Times article reported that “the steady exodus of women from the home is wreaking profound changes in…friendship patterns, volunteerism, education, neighborhood groups and the suburban way of life itself.”[18] In this way, pastoral capitalism actually challenged gendered suburban ideals of women in the home and offered women limited freedom, but at the same time, took advantage of the social constraints of the suburban woman.
Employment within suburban corporations had its advantages as well as disadvantages for the suburban woman. On the one hand, women often faced barriers in the male dominated corporate landscape that reinforced their role in society as secondary earners, housewives and mothers. This was highlighted by wage differentials and limited opportunities for advancement to male dominated managerial positions. On the other hand, corporate employment allowed suburban women to escape the confinements of their suburban home and financially contribute to their home and society as a whole.
Notes:
[1] Kirsten Nelson. “Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work,” in Production, Work, Territory: The Geographical Anatomy of Industrial Capitalism, eds. Allen J. Scott and Michael Storper (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986) 150.
[2] Louise A. Monzingo. Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011) 24.
[3] Fortune article quoted in Monzingo, Pastoral Capitalism, 24.
[4] Ibid 21, 24-25; Paul F. Coe. “The Nonwhite Population Surge to our Cities.” Land Economics 35, no.3 (August 1959): 195-210. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3144816
[5] Nelson, Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work, 150, 152.
[6] Monzingo, Pastoral Capitalism, 114.
[7] Ibid, 116-117; Barbara F. Reskin and Heidi I. Hartman. Women’s Work, Men’s Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. (Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986) 38; Nelson, Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work, 153.
[8] Larry E Suter and Herman P. Miller. “Income Differences Between Men and Career Women.” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 4 (January 1973): 962-974. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2776614
[9]Ibid 965.
[10] Monzingo. Pastoral Capitalism, 117; Barbara F. Reskin and Heidi I. Hartman. Women’s Work, Men’s Work, 39.
[11]Nelson, Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work, 154; Having a family and a suburban home could also be tied to notions of the home as a moral place with traditional family values. In the suburban ideal, these characteristics are a part of suburban life and translated in to responsible and more reliable workforce.
[12] Ibid, 165.
[13] “The City Comes to the Country.” New York Times, May 23, 1982.
[14] Nelson, Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work,165; Monzingo, Pastoral Capitalism, 29-31.
[15] National Manpower Council. Work in the Lives of Married Women: Proceedings of a Conference on Womanpower. Held October 20-25, 1957, at Arden House, Harriman Campus of Columbia University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) 76.
[16] “The City Comes to the Country.”
[17] National Manpower Council. Work in the Lives of Married Women: Proceedings of a Conference on Womanpower. Held October 20-25, 1957, at Arden House, Harriman Campus of Columbia University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) 95-96, 115.
[18] “The City Comes to the Country."
The exodus of corporations from the city center and into the suburban periphery beginning in the 1950s held gendered implications that contradicted traditional suburban ideals of domesticity, and at the same time encouraged gendered divisions of labor. The employment of women in these new suburban corporate offices challenged stereotypes of women in the home by allowing them to become participants in the corporate institution, while simultaneously entrenching existing suburban gender roles through labor and wage disparities.
Gendered Labor Divisions in the Corporate Suburban Office
The expanding feminized labor market in the suburbs was an important determinant in the relocation of corporations to the periphery. Post-World War II, growing companies required large clerical staffs to fulfill necessary administrative functions, and white, middle-class, educated women were often the preferred labor force to fulfill these positions.[1] Middle-class white families continued to leave the city for the suburbs, causing the supply of what corporations viewed as “high-quality” staff—that is, white and middle-class—to diminish in city centers.[2] Cities were increasingly becoming more ethnically and racially diverse, as the non-white and Puerto Rican population continued to rapidly increase in urban centers. For instance, in New York City alone the non-white and Puerto Rican population increased by twenty-seven percent from 1950 to 1957, and as expressed in aFortune article in 1967, “some companies are reluctant to hire a large proportion of Negro and Puerto Rican Help.”[3]
New York corporations partly rationalized their exodus from the urban center and emphasized the importance of a corporate estate based on the need for staff and the unsuitable, diverse, and working class clerical labor force in the city.[4] According to social geographer Kirstin Nelson, clerical labor is a “locational determinant” which would prompt a company to relocate based on the availability of labor, as clerical labor is generally the largest segment of the corporate labor force.[5] Women often represented the large majority of the clerical labor and overall employee population in suburban offices and corporate estates. For example, during the late 1950’s the General Foods corporate estate in White Plains, New York, employed 2,000 workers, and 1,600 were women in clerical positions.[6]
How Corporate Offices Entrenched Traditional Gender Roles
The suburbs contained the ideal clerical workforce for companies. It offered a large supply of white, middle-class, educated women and excluded what was considered ‘undesirable ethnic groups,’ which were often restricted to urban cities. For these corporations, employing women as their largest occupational labor group offered added advantages over hiring men. For one, it allowed companies to pay lower wages because women were often secondary earners, while the husbands remained the primary bread winners of the household.[7] The high-wage, managerial positions within the corporations were dominated by males, while the low-wage, clerical positions were dominated by females. For women, wage differentials reinforced the idea that the home was their primary responsibility and work was secondary. In 1969, women in the United States earned a median of $3,100 while men earned $7,300.[8] Although wage differences between genders can be attributed to the type of employment performed, even in the same profession, males earned higher wages than females. For example, in 1966, clerical female workers earned a median income of $5,460, in contrast to male clerical workers who earned a median of $6,880; even in a female dominated occupation such as clerical work, men got paid more than women. [9]
Second, the patriarchal suburban power structure of the home, where the woman was expected to be subordinate to the man, complemented the hierarchical system of managerial capitalism in the pastoral capitalist structure, which required a “docile female labor supply” that was easy to manage.[10] Worker docility combined with the peripheral location of suburban corporate offices also reduced the chances of female unionization, often prevalent in the city center, since it separated women from influential urban networks. Lastly, suburban married women were regarded as more reliable and stable workers because they tended to have families and most likely owned their home.[11]
Income and gender highly limited the mobility of the female clerical staff in the suburbs. Corporate offices benefited from female constraints of suburban living and low-wage clerical occupations, which compelled women to efficiently balance household responsibilities with employment.[12] Women were still expected to fulfill their domestic duties in the home and generally preferred a shorter commute to work. A New York Times article from 1982 captures these sentiments as a suburban secretary states, “when I decided to go to work… the most important consideration was being able to get my children quickly in case of an emergency. I travel only 20 minutes to work thus have more time for myself and my family.”[13] This outlook was advantageous to corporate offices because it resulted in greater employee satisfaction, lower labor costs, increased employee productivity and a decrease in turnover rates.[14] On the other hand, stereotypes of women as domestic and docile encouraged gendered divisions of labor that maintained women in clerical, low-wage jobs and men in the managerial, high-wage occupations within suburban corporate offices for some time. Corporate management utilized traditional distinctions of male and female jobs to determine career advancement opportunities in the work place.[15]
How Pastoral Capitalism Challenged Traditional Gender Roles
Ironically, the suburban corporate office was also ideal for women’s suburban lifestyle. While suburban women were expected to remain in the private sphere, corporate offices offered them opportunity to participate in the public sphere without social backlash. The corporate office created an environment that added to the suburban woman’s standard of living and at the same time allowed her to attend to her domestic duties. This came from the offices’ proximity to the home and the amenities often available in suburban headquarters, including recreational areas, security and comfort. A suburban mother and corporate office worker for Ebasco Service Inc, a corporation that held its headquarters in the suburbs of Lynhurst, New Jersey until the 1990’s, expressed these sentiments in a 1982 New York Times article as she stated, “Ebasco’s emphasis on employee relations made me feel like my work was appreciated. I also have a recreation club, exercise club… available to me. Going to work has actually improved the quality of my life.”[16]
Even with low-wage employment, women were able to earn their own income, contribute to the household, and to the upward mobility of their suburban middle-class families. The additional income allowed the family to participate in leisure activities and consumption that symbolized status. [17] The same New York Times article reported that “the steady exodus of women from the home is wreaking profound changes in…friendship patterns, volunteerism, education, neighborhood groups and the suburban way of life itself.”[18] In this way, pastoral capitalism actually challenged gendered suburban ideals of women in the home and offered women limited freedom, but at the same time, took advantage of the social constraints of the suburban woman.
Employment within suburban corporations had its advantages as well as disadvantages for the suburban woman. On the one hand, women often faced barriers in the male dominated corporate landscape that reinforced their role in society as secondary earners, housewives and mothers. This was highlighted by wage differentials and limited opportunities for advancement to male dominated managerial positions. On the other hand, corporate employment allowed suburban women to escape the confinements of their suburban home and financially contribute to their home and society as a whole.
Notes:
[1] Kirsten Nelson. “Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work,” in Production, Work, Territory: The Geographical Anatomy of Industrial Capitalism, eds. Allen J. Scott and Michael Storper (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986) 150.
[2] Louise A. Monzingo. Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011) 24.
[3] Fortune article quoted in Monzingo, Pastoral Capitalism, 24.
[4] Ibid 21, 24-25; Paul F. Coe. “The Nonwhite Population Surge to our Cities.” Land Economics 35, no.3 (August 1959): 195-210. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3144816
[5] Nelson, Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work, 150, 152.
[6] Monzingo, Pastoral Capitalism, 114.
[7] Ibid, 116-117; Barbara F. Reskin and Heidi I. Hartman. Women’s Work, Men’s Work: Sex Segregation on the Job. (Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986) 38; Nelson, Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work, 153.
[8] Larry E Suter and Herman P. Miller. “Income Differences Between Men and Career Women.” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 4 (January 1973): 962-974. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2776614
[9]Ibid 965.
[10] Monzingo. Pastoral Capitalism, 117; Barbara F. Reskin and Heidi I. Hartman. Women’s Work, Men’s Work, 39.
[11]Nelson, Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work, 154; Having a family and a suburban home could also be tied to notions of the home as a moral place with traditional family values. In the suburban ideal, these characteristics are a part of suburban life and translated in to responsible and more reliable workforce.
[12] Ibid, 165.
[13] “The City Comes to the Country.” New York Times, May 23, 1982.
[14] Nelson, Labor Demand, Labor Supply and the Suburbanization of Low-wage Office Work,165; Monzingo, Pastoral Capitalism, 29-31.
[15] National Manpower Council. Work in the Lives of Married Women: Proceedings of a Conference on Womanpower. Held October 20-25, 1957, at Arden House, Harriman Campus of Columbia University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) 76.
[16] “The City Comes to the Country.”
[17] National Manpower Council. Work in the Lives of Married Women: Proceedings of a Conference on Womanpower. Held October 20-25, 1957, at Arden House, Harriman Campus of Columbia University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) 95-96, 115.
[18] “The City Comes to the Country."