Why Were Telephone Operators Women?

While riding on Spaceship Earth yesterday, I started wondering about early telephone operators. Why were early telephone operators women?  Ordinarily, new jobs have been filled by men.  Only when men decide the work isn't suitable are women hired.  For example, early typists were men.  Telegraph operators were also men. 

So why were telephone operators women? Because of some physical attribute (women's voice carrying better, or women's fingers being better able to operate the switchboards)?  Because telephones seemed more private as opposed to public, more closely related to a woman's "natural" sphere? 

A quick web search turned up something interesting:  Apparently, the first operators were teenaged boys, who were, umm, not the most gracious operators imaginable.  So they were replaced with women, who were polite and docile.  The women had to be young, white, and unmarried; they had to put up with low pay and somewhat humiliating treatment.  This site has more details:

Because women were generally discriminated against, operators' wages were low. And operators seldom got the respect they deserved. The typical operator earned about $7 per week -- a small salary even in 1900. She worked ten or eleven hours a day, six days a week. If necessary, she also worked nights and holidays. An operator who got married was forced to leave her job. To many early telephone users -- most of whom were wealthy -- the telephone operator was just another household servant.

Still, the operator was the heart of the telephone system. She watched over a switchboard containing up to 200 phone lines, listening in with her clunky metal headset. Her main job was to plug callers' phone lines into the phone lines of the people they wanted to speak to. But she often acted as the town's information source, too. Operators were also expected to inform customers of election results, streetcar breakdowns, storms, train arrivals, and much more.

In 1900, the life of the rural operator was very different from her peers in the city. The telephone was a big hit with the farm families who could afford one. But there were rarely enough calls to tie a rural operator to her switchboard. To help pass the time, some women attached long cords to their headsets. That way, they could walk around their homes doing chores while they waited for the phone to ring. Rural operators enjoyed a lot of independence.

City operators, on the other hand, handled up to 600 calls an hour. To increase efficiency, telephone companies hired scientific management teams. These teams created rules for everything the operator did, from how she should sit to how long she should take to answer a call -- which was four seconds. They were forbidden to have conversations with customers. Supervisors watched over operators constantly, even secretly listening in on their conversations.

Like school children, city operators had to ask permission to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water. Supervisors punished them for even the smallest break in the rules. For arriving a minute late to work, an operator was sometimes sent to sit in a punishment room -- a humiliating experience for a grown woman.

Emma Nutt, the first woman telephone operator, was hired in Boston on Sept. 1, 1878--a day that is now observed as "Emma Nutt" day.  She worked for the Telephone Dispatch Company for 33 years.

When I met my husband, he was working as a telephone operator, and while the job was adequately paid considering its level of difficulty (a union benefit), it still wasn't exactly a fulfilling career.   Now, of course, after so many layoffs, I wonder if any telephone operators are left anywhere.

Comments

[jo(e)]

Interesting. I never thought about this before.

[Melissa]

I can't say that I've ever met a telephone operator before. What does your husband do now?

[lori]

Very interesting.

I put myself through all of my master's and most of my Ph.D. by working as a flight attendant. When I began in 1989 I was allowed to be married (which was an improvement from only a few years earlier when it was considered inappropriate for a married woman to be flying all over the world in the company of the male flight crews and passengers--women were forced to resign once they married) but I did have to weigh in on a weekly basis during the six-week training course and there were strict regulations on how long my hair and fingernails should be, how big my earrings were and how tall my heels were (the "concourse" shoes had to be at least 2-inch heels, the "on-board" shoes could be flats). I also remember being asked during my interview if I was currently engaged AND if I had a history of debilitating menstrual cycles.

Things have relaxed a bit now, but still, when you think about it....1989 wasn't that long ago...;^)

[Beth]

Lori, your flight attendant experience is very interesting! You're right, 1989 wasn't long ago. Amazing how far we've come (and to think, many of my students believe that feminism has been unnecessary since the 60s). Of course we STILL have quite a way to go.

Melissa, my husband is a teacher now. I think he enjoys teaching more than he enjoyed being an operator. :)