Sunday, November 13, 2005

Talk about the glass ceiling

Many of the urban legends Snopes.com publishes turn out to be true. Here's an odd one: Some people have been forwarding around a 1943 trade-magazine article on "11 tips for hiring women."

It includes such gems as "general experience indicates that 'husky' girls ... are likely to be more even-tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters" and "give the female employe [sic] ... a definite day-long schedule of duties so that she'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes."

Ay-yi-yi...

2 comments:

Dimestore Lipstick said...

It reminds me of the episode of Family Guy where they show the 1950s film about female employees.
"Remember, nothing says Good Job like a firm, open-palmed slap on the behind!".

Anonymous said...

I read this to my mom. She said that, not only was this perfectly common treatment for women before 1970, but also she believed that most of them are actually true and were just poorly worded, like the one about how women want to put on lipstick and wash their hands.