“Linda, eficiente y silenciosa”: historia y paradojas del oficio de secretaria en Bogotá (1968-2000)

Abstract

This research explores the trajectories of Antonia, María Helena, Cermira and Patricia, four former secretaries graduated from Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA) who worked in Bogotá companies between late sixties and the year 2000. Based on the question about employment and training paths, this monography explores each experience surrounding their arrival, formation and working practices; in a moment where the demand of workers in technical occupations, allowed the growth of female labor force at industrial and service economic sectors in Colombia. Thus, this paper offers an approach about secretarial training paths and about the dimensions, tensions, paradoxes, and experiences associated with the practice of secretarial work, considering each trajectory assumed by the former secretaries into important companies such as Acerías Paz del Río, Catastro Distrital, the Administrative Department of Security and the Military Industry. The experiences surrounding secretarial work shed lights to understand it as a profession that dialogued and confronted traditional roles such as service, docility and appearance associated with female labor. From training, the secretary’s work demanded to embrace the label of being “pretty, efficient and quiet” to achieve success at work. Nevertheless, in practice, each secretary negotiated such attitudes at the time of taking over the administration of the office. Thus, this thesis seeks to demonstrate that the administration of appearance and the administration of the office exercised by each secretary were tools that helped them to reach their labor promotion and becoming indispensables for the operation of the business world.