YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY KATIE GIBBS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000300410002-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 2, 2004
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: May 21, 1974
• Content Type: NSPR

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itting up straight? 1faving happy'
thoughts? Are xve ready? 13 e einl" At
that command, 34 "Gibbs Girls" frantically
began drumming their fingers in a typing
test.
In an era of expanding job opportunities for
women, the Katherine Gibbs School, one of. the coun-
try's largest producers of -executive secretaries,
recognizes that clerical skills and personal attrac-
tiveness. remain a woman's chief assets when she job
hunts.
No matter that female caucuses are hauling cor-
porations off to court in "affirmative action" suits on,
behalf of women facing job discrimination because of
sex.
The Gibbs chain, Katie Gibbs as it's called by its
graduates, continues to teach a program that has
shown only minute change since the first school
opened in 1911. There are six Gibbs schools along the
East Coast. -
While feminists seeking expanded opportunities
for women take exception to their typing, filing,
shorthand and personal grooming formula, the chain
is thriving. Enrollment has increased from 1,900
three years ago to 2,, 00 today.
And their growth has meant profit, A.
spokesvronran for Macmillan, Inc., the publishers who
acquired the chain from the Gibbs family in 1968, said
`, the schools "had their best year (in 1973) making
new revenues and profits."
At Gibbs the curriculum is, admittedly, planned by
males.
"The designers of our programs are the employer-
s," said the chain's executive vice president, Ms.
Edith Gardener, at the New York school at 200 Park
Ave. "W're base everythini, on the needs of the men in
industry who will be providing jobs for our
graduates. The deciding factor in planning
curriculum is industry's standards. After all, this is
the thing that determines whether or not the girls get
hired, and, consequently, whether or not we have a
school."
School programs are for high school graduates,
women Who have some college credits, and college
graduates.
Scver:rl feminists "occupied" the Nev; York school
in I J 9 clain'.irrg that the Gibbs formula impedes a
woman's on-the-job progress. By asking male
executives for advice on the curriculum, the ad hoe
group of feminists said that the school was allowing
them to define the skills a woman could receive, and,
there fore, the role she'd play on the job.
The demonstrators v.-ere. ousted, but today the
~rchnol has a ' Manage,neat for Today's %Vonrnn"
lire;tr:rma. Courses in(-ludo: Essentials of fianncial
I)l,Uiil, ri., office ~ieras anti pr'ucedures, and ; Its}~r-
visory managerial techniques. If taken in a tv:o-year
sequence, they lead to a Gibbs Certificate.
? The school also has'a "New Woman Manager"
seminar covering "case studies in decision making,"
and "trends in uranal;enrent approach to people and
} productivity."
But feminist Lee \i'alker, who formerly headed the
National Organization for Women's (NOW) New
York committee on office workers, said of the cour-
ses:
"I fear they are 11110Ae ,ryc~ ~c~fd~ be '1` DO5/01/1'1? 1ab41 1 P 81U~ 1 ObA ~fl4h~(~~YrSine, a
i
tation. Why have ::pee f1"ior women co'.rr:i,_s. n Gibbs lrral.uuto, nutrrrrc her sari, Cur on, grid they
ta'L YORK f) ILIX NEWS
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and place tl-:cnr in internal management training
programs. Now suddenly we are sending women off
to a girl's school.
"And they are paying for these courses themselves
without guarantees that their companies are going to
recognize Gibbs training." .
So far, only three women have graduated from the'
two-year program.
According to Dean of Liberal Arts Mrs. Carol
Eakle, who ;apervises the series, one graduate
received a "lateral promotion," where she got looney
for essentially the same duties; another switched
companies, moving to a "unique" position, and the
third is "working" in California. ?
Eleven more women are expected to graduate this
-spring, and Mrs. Eakle says more time is needed
before the course can be evaluated.
Gibbs officers grant that the decision to move.a
'woman into management remains with the company
involved. But they see the course as an "intermediate'
step" in preparing a woman's confidence so she'd
make good managerial material should her cornlia11 y
decide to make her a candidate for management
training.
. Feminist Margie Albert disagrees. She believes
that women don't have such low self esteem that they
need this intermediate step.
"The courses make it seem as -though there are
very real possibilities for women to enter
management," says Ms. Albert, a former secretary
w?hV is now an organizer for District 65, Distributive
Workers of America.. "I can understand that they
want to teach the basic skills, their typing, shorthand
.and filing formula. Jobs for stenographers, typists
and secretaries are going begging. But for wol:men in-
terested in nrana;enrent, well, they should level with'
there. How many possibilities are there. really, for
them to get in., Offering these courses is sort of
selling a myth."
Of the 930-plus students at the New York school,
the majority conic to; as one brochure says, "learn to
take rapid dictation and to ~roduce those beautifully
typed letters in uurreccable English."' '
"I majored in ail; you know, oil, landscapes, that
sort of thing," said Katie Lawrence, 21,a graduate of
St. Mary's College in Raleigh, N.C. "Most of my
friends were going to teach, and I had no desire what-
soever to do that."
Gibbs student Mrs. Razia Aslam, 27, is a graduate
of Punjab University in Pakistan. The Board of
Education here world not recognize her four-year
degree (two years in applied psychology plus two
years of teacher training), so she has swapped
teaching plans for it secretarial career. "I would not
want to go to university all over again," Mrs. Aslant
maintained.
Gibbs girls, as they are called, have conic a long
way from the white gloves, navy suit and hat image.
They wear robs of hair, checks, prints and plaids, and
have sandaled fact.
Founder Gibbs probably would Approve of their
-move alone, with the times image. Gibbs was no
typing gofer. She was an alert business woman, a
widow with two children, who noticed that.womert
were moving into clerical jobs that lurid been held by
men as the men went off to #iglrt WW I. She was the
first women to teach English and business math in
addition to typing and shorthand. And she was one of
the first to promote the idea that women could com-
pose letters and otherwise work on their own. Gibbs
This office
was queried
on this
subject by
Jean Perry.)
large. corporations, when they're looking for people ran the chain until "Iacnrillalr acquired it..
to put into r,lunaf?ement slots, they search then, nut .