Implementing Affirmative Action: Underutilization and Its Limits

When President Johnson issued Executive Order (E.O.) 11246 in 1965, the directive addressed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin, but not sex. Liberal feminists immediately lobbied the Department of Labor (DOL) to change the order, and in 1967 President Johnson issued E.O. 11375, which amended 11246 to include sex as a protected category. A newly created DOL agency, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC), would oversee implementation and enforcement of affirmative action. It issued Order No. 4 in 1970, requiring federal contractors to submit “goals and timetables” to remedy the absence of minorities in certain job categories. Employers must make a “good faith effort” to meet numerical targets; otherwise, they could face the possibility of investigation or sanctions (such as disqualification from the federal contract-bidding process, cancelation of contracts, or possible further legal action in court). The OFCC diffused this regulatory burden for compliance: each federal agency retained responsibility for monitoring its own contracts.^{Footnote 39}

Government officials hesitated to fully support the goals and timetables approach for sex, which resulted in feminist calls for greater enforcement. Secretary of Labor James Hodgson told feminists that “employment problems of women are different,” since not all women were actively looking for full-time work.^{Footnote 40} Although 9to5 had not yet officially formed in 1970, other women’s groups challenged the DOL’s distinction between race and sex. Higher education served as the first site of struggle: the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Women’s Equity and Action League (WEAL) filed complaints against more than one hundred colleges and universities, petitioning to increase the proportion of women in graduate programs as well as to hire and promote more female faculty.^{Footnote 41} President Nixon responded to feminist pressure by establishing the President’s Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities in 1970. The Task Force’s report, “A Matter of Simple Justice,” focused not just on sex-based educational barriers but also on problems of workplace inequality. It called for full enforcement of affirmative action guidelines, stating that such regulation could have far-reaching effects for women at all economic levels. Affirmative action could improve the plight of women in poverty by providing female workers with training programs to increase earnings.^{Footnote 42}

In the midst of reaction from NOW and WEAL, along with the recommendations of the Task Force, the DOL issued Revised Order No. 4 in December 1971. A mandate to correct the underutilization of women in previously restricted job categories such as “official, managers, professionals, technicians, craftsmen, and sales workers (except in certain retail occupations)” rested at the heart of this order. Secretary Hodgson gave employers 120 days to comply, which meant that “search consultants have been thrashing about trying to decipher what consequences for them were buried in its turgid, bureaucratic prose.”^{Footnote 43} Called the “Magna Carta of female employment” by one historian, it forced employers to adopt the goals and timetables approach for sex-based affirmative action.^{Footnote 44} According to historian Hugh Davis Graham, Revised Order No. 4 was “an ambiguous abstraction . . . pregnant with possibilities for mischief as well as for beneficence.”^{Footnote 45} Conducting numerical analysis might have seemed like an objective exercise, but actually subjective judgments guided each step of the process. Employers were to conduct audits of their workforce and surrounding communities, set numerical targets, and work to establish statistical parity between the percentages of women and minorities in the local population and the percentages of women and minorities in certain job categories at their firms.

Employers retained much interpretative power when managing their own data in large part because they were classifying their employees by job title, not by salary. When performing audits and constructing targets, employers had discretion to delineate the boundaries of their own categories. Akin to gerrymandering of voting districts, employers could use titles to label employees as managerial when in reality they had extremely low salaries and worked in positions with scant mobility. In the publishing industry, Houghton Mifflin relabeled much of its clerical work, giving women particular job titles like “editorial assistant” so that it could shift more of its female workforce into underutilized categories when submitting affirmative action data to the government. In reality, these women were really doing the duties of and receiving the pay of secretaries.^{Footnote 46}

In the banking industry, engaging in “title inflation” gave women managerial titles with little or no change in responsibility or salary. This practice permitted employers to reclassify their female employees into higher categories on EEO forms. In compliance reviews of the nation’s largest banks, some employers reported a 50 percent increase in numbers of managerial women and a corresponding 50 percent decrease in clerical women within one year! According to one vigilant regulator, such “games make for lots of paper work, but no progress; they are simply means of preserving the status quo, and thus ought to serve as grounds for a finding of noncompliance,” although usually no government action was taken.^{Footnote 47} Manipulation of job titles could hide the severity of occupational segregation. Because most compliance efforts used titles instead of salaries to categorize employees, reports could demonstrate a faulty sense of statistical equity.^{Footnote 48}

Once employers classified their current employees, employers—not regulators—determined the boundaries of the potential labor pool to set goals for underutilized positions. Although many employers determined labor supply by including women and minorities who were “available, interested, and qualified,” delineating these terms allowed for an incredible degree of discretion. When determining “availability,” some used national data while others relied on local data depending on the status of the target position (higher-level management positions assumed nationwide mobility while clerical jobs assumed only local mobility). When determining level of interest, some included only those who completed the application process for the position while others assumed that any woman or minority looking for employment would have interest. When determining qualifications, some included all women and minorities who had potential if given training while others included only those who currently possessed the necessary skills.^{Footnote 49}

Also when considering labor supply, Revised Order No. 4 instructed employers to consider both internal and external candidates.^{Footnote 50} As 9to5 was gaining momentum in cities across the nation, it realized that pushing for serious consideration of internal employees could promise upward mobility for many seasoned women office workers who had reached the top of clerical job ladders. Although women were underutilized in managerial and supervisory positions, often white women composed the majority of the salaried workforce in many banks, insurance companies, and publishing houses. Following the strategic vision of Nussbaum, 9to5 claimed that clerical labor should be considered relevant experience for management, which would position experienced female office workers with opportunities for promotion. Nussbaum believed that “there should be no such thing as a dead-end job for anyone.”^{Footnote 51} With affirmative action, “so-called dead end jobs such as many clericals now feel they have would be opened up for promotion to positions of increased responsibility.”^{Footnote 52} While traditional norms held that women chose secretarial work, 9to5 countered that the clustering of women in low-paying clerical positions did not reflect a preference. Rather, it revealed that long-standing gender bias in job ladders and organizational structures.^{Footnote 53}

Although 9to5, comprised largely of white women, perceived clerical work as oppressive, black women saw office jobs as an opportunity for social mobility. For decades, private-sector employers had rejected women of color, opting to fill clerical vacancies with white women only. Yet because of changing laws that banned racial discrimination, as well as growing demand for clerical labor, women of color began working in white-collar jobs during the postwar era. From 1940 to 1988, the percentage of black clerical women soared from 1.5 to 30.1 percent.^{Footnote 54} To be sure, employers who did hire women of color relegated them to less gentile, lower-paid work in back rooms away from public view. And racial discrimination in the office continued to pose challenges for black women despite changing employment laws. One woman, who eventually found work at Boston College after searching extensively for a clerical job, described the racial hostility she encountered from colleagues: “People can smile at you for days and you think they really want you, but meanwhile behind your back they’re doing things to get rid of you. It’s just that they don’t want a black person around them. They don’t even care to find out whether they like you or not.”^{Footnote 55} Trying to gain acceptance from employers and employees in a traditionally-white organization could be difficult if not impossible. Nevertheless, affirmative action provided women of color with the opportunity to reject domestic or factory jobs and try office work instead. White women, in contrast, already enjoyed this privilege even if they had limited access to higher-paid managerial positions.

Because 9to5 cared not about moving women into office work, but primarily about moving women beyond the clerical ranks, it wanted employers to redesign “historical flows,” or conventional pipelines to management. Members believed that experience on the clerical ladder should qualify an internal candidate for a management position in her organization. However, government mandates did not force employers to reconsider the value of female-dominated work when remedying underutilization. The OFCC instructed employers to consider historical flows, which meant that employers should look to employees in traditional feeder jobs when filling target positions. This approach left systemic gender bias untouched because it reinforced traditional promotional paths composed of male-dominated positions. Organizational structures maintained occupational segregation among internal employees: women relegated to clerical ladders were not considered qualified for positions on managerial ladders. Consent decrees signed by AT&T (1973) and GE (1978) both utilized historical flows, confirming that compliance agencies found this approach lawful. While personnel experts noted that historical flows could “perpetuate past discrimination,” they were “inexpensive and relatively easy to implement,” which made the strategy an appealing way for employers to comply with affirmative action. Employers would have to do more extensive job analysis if they sought to determine which employees outside a historical flow might have content knowledge (or the potential to acquire content knowledge) relevant to the target position.^{Footnote 56}

An array of professional consultants arose to help corporations comply with Revised Order No. 4. The DOL issued the directive in December 1972, requiring federal contractors to have goals and timetables within 120 days. Given this short timeline for compliance, as well as the financial cost of instituting organizational changes, some companies took the position of doing “the minimum [they could] get by on,” according to expert Susan Davis. Davis served as vice president for a Chicago-based consultancy, the Urban Research Corporation, that led a two-day conference, “Equal Opportunity for Women: Corporate Affirmative Action Programs,” in February 1972 for six hundred executives, activists, and policymakers.^{Footnote 57} According to Davis, companies needed to reexamine the manner in which they categorized female-dominated work such as secretarial labor: “Often these jobs classifications merit higher salary and status. In fact, many jobs done by women are heavy in work load and responsibility, but light in pay and promotional opportunity.”^{Footnote 58} Cited in major media outlets nationwide for her knowledge about affirmative action for women, Davis recognized that adherence to traditional job categories often misrepresented the value of clerical workers.

Establishing a business case for equal opportunity, seasoned practitioner Barbara Boyle argued that fully integrating women into management required a reconsideration of traditional gender norms as well as a close examination of personnel practices. An expert on women and work, she established a prominent niche consultancy after leading the creation of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)’s affirmative action program. Boyle joined forces with Sharon Kirkman, who had created American Express’s program, founding Boyle/Kirkman Associates in 1972. Time magazine described their work for clients such as Pillsbury and Avon as “therapy for sexists” that could last up to two years and cost up to $50,000.^{Footnote 59}

Boyle’s Harvard Business Review article argued that affirmative action compliance benefited the bottom line “because this largest minority (40% of the work force) is an almost untapped resource of talent and skills.”^{Footnote 60} Employers needed to rethink the way that they identified and tracked women in their organizations. For all female employees, managers should maintain a file that included “prior experience, interests, next two possible positions, long-range potential, and person development plans.”^{Footnote 61} Boyle continued that managers often overlooked internal candidates when looking for female talent. Conducting job analysis and restructuring individual jobs would show personnel directors that they have a “wealth of resources in women filling such positions as administrative assistant and manager of the word-processing center.” These women should be “candidates for other positions in their organizations which previously were beyond their reach.”^{Footnote 62}

While women like Davis, Boyle, and Kirkman consulted with corporate executives and personnel directors, 9to5 pushed for grassroots change. It lobbied employers to alter hiring, training, and promotional procedures so that internal employees could become more upwardly mobile. 9to5 focused on two specific personnel processes: internal job postings and written job descriptions. Regarding internal job postings, 9to5 envisioned that if clericals could receive notice of management openings, then they would have greater opportunity for promotions. And forcing employers to revisit clerical job descriptions would demonstrate that many women were performing integral and skilled work that qualified them for positions of greater authority. Campaigning for these procedural changes resulted in some success: workers won internal postings and written job descriptions from large publishing houses, as well as from banks and insurance companies across the nation.^{Footnote 63} Yet attention to these formal processes had limitations: line managers and personnel directors had to adopt a new mindset, recognizing that clericals made significant contributions to core business functions. They had to perceive clericals, who were nontraditional candidates, as suited for management. Also they had to write more detailed and accurate job descriptions so that clericals could receive public credit for the value and expertise they added.

However, these types of personnel practices, even when legally in compliance with affirmative action directives, failed to benefit existing clerical workers by addressing separation of clerical and management ladders. When 9to5 investigated the current policies of eleven Boston insurance firms regarding internal job postings, written job descriptions, employee training, and promotions, bias against clerical potential became clear. Most companies did not offer training to their clerical workers so that they could compete for higher-status positions. Women moved into lower-status training programs. 9to5 recorded that at Travelers Insurance “jobs [were] filled from the outside” and at John Hancock “promotions [occur] from outside, not [from] within.” Training for promotions was available for those working in sales, management, or underwriting, but not for clerical work. And internal postings were common for “lower level positions” or “lower level clerical positions” but not for managerial openings.^{Footnote 64} 9to5’s data revealed that finding and accessing higher-paid positions remained elusive for clerical women even within their own companies. Many companies preferred to hire externally for professional positions rather than to train or promote clerical workers internally. Although 9to5 considered many insurance companies’ practices to be unfair, most of their practices were not illegal. Companies did not have to promote clericals to managerial positions as long as they recruited external female candidates to fill underutilized positions.

Personnel practices often favored external applicants, particularly new college graduates, over current employees. An executive vice president noted that Mobil recruited at colleges to fill new openings for professional positions.^{Footnote 65} Similarly, at the Polaroid Corporation, personnel officers recruited talented minorities and women from college campuses. The company strategically advertised in publications such as Black Collegian, Collegiate Women’s Careers, as well as female- and minority-specific issues of MBA and New Engineer to reach new graduates.^{Footnote 66} General Motors reported that because of its attempt to bring women into underutilized positions, it now includes “three ‘all-girl’ colleges on its 100-member recruiting list.”^{Footnote 67} A Chicago insurance company reported college recruitment that was “more aggressively keyed to finding competent women” by going to all women’s colleges.^{Footnote 68} The Honeywell Affirmative Action Plan declared that recruiters should solicit applicants at local minority employment agencies. Yet concerning the recruitment of internal applicants for internal positions, Honeywell promised only to publically post its commitment to EEO laws in the lobby and in the company newspaper.^{Footnote 69} Programs at these companies offered new openings to young, well-educated women and minorities. Yet managers overlooked the potential internal pool of talent, perceiving seasoned office workers as lacking in experience and managerial potential.

Other records confirm that little if any corporate attention was dedicated to the mobility of women in clerical positions because overrepresentation did not trigger compliance reviews. Honeywell Information Systems reported in 1974 that it had no EEO problems in the clerical category because underutilization of women was not a problem there.^{Footnote 70} The Cabot Corporation reported similar findings. Only areas with too few women or minorities were marked as problematic and in need of remedy. Cabot claimed to have a “general policy of promoting from within,” although it had no formal training programs to move women out of clerical positions.^{Footnote 71} A female human resource officer from the Norton Simon conglomerate explained the ways that she fulfilled government mandates in companies such as Max Factor, Canada Dry, Hunt’s Tomato Paste, and Avis Rent-a-Car. Each of her nine companies had to report EEO statistics quarterly to show that they were working toward more equitable distributions of women and minorities in underutilized categories. No numerical goals, however, had to be established to increase the percentages of men in female-dominated jobs.^{Footnote 72}

Moving women into management and executive positions often sustained class-based inequalities. Fortune magazine noted that of the ten highest-ranked women in business in 1973, eight had the benefit of a family connection or a marriage to a powerful man. Women like media owner and publisher Katharine Graham and Barbie creator Ruth Handler were “highly capable and hard-working executives,” according to Fortune, but they “did not start out in their companies in jobs with limited futures, and they did not have to work their way through a corporate hierarchy that discriminated against them.”^{Footnote 73} Even women trying to access lower organizational levels faced barriers related to economic status. Following high school, many young women had to start earning wages for themselves and their families, and they found sex-segregated office work available. Yet in the banking industry, for instance, starting in the 1970s, their clerical work experience would no longer qualify them for positions of increased pay. New requirements that bank managers have college degrees prevented internal mobility for seasoned clerical workers.^{Footnote 74} Before the 1960s, typists and clerical workers came to banks directly from high school graduation. Then experienced bank clericals could become tellers, and experienced tellers could become assistant officers and officers.^{Footnote 75} But according to a personnel officer at one New York City bank, by 1970 “about 85 percent of our officers are recruited from the college recruitment program.”^{Footnote 76} And the changing nature of office work, toward greater automation and more outsourcing, drove even sharper divides between the clerical and managerial ladders.^{Footnote 77}

If managers usually looked externally for young college women to fill leadership positions, then “women already on the staff [became] culturally conditioned not to want the responsibilities of higher positions, or they [were] afraid to ask for them,” according to Mary Ralston, a bank personnel director who wrote a book on training women for supervisory positions. Ralston noted that “hesitancy seems to fade with the encouragement offered by an effective affirmative action program.”^{Footnote 78} Leading consultant Barbara Boyle identified a talented receptionist on her own staff who had promotional potential. The receptionist told Boyle, “‘I never saw a need to go back to school and complete credits necessary for my degree. But now I’m convinced management is sincere to the commitment to equal opportunity, so I’m really working hard to qualify for advancement.’”^{Footnote 79} A voice from the top needed to reassure the receptionist that she could be considered for promotion; then she gained momentum to finish her college degree.

In addition to practitioner experts like Ralston and Boyle, professors in the Harvard Business Review recognized that the implementation of affirmative action had meritocratic shortcomings. A 1976 article explained that the most common compliance practices demonstrated “good intentions,” but they did not go far enough, failing to address the root causes of statistical disparities. The two business school professors explained that when setting goals, most employer created a “balance sheet,” which was akin to a snapshot of demographic data. This report would classify job categories as “professional, sales, clerical, laborers,” for instance, and then show percentages of minorities or women in each category. The balance-sheet approach had several problems, according to the authors. First, categories were too broad. One company had a category of “officials and managers,” which included “positions from the corporate president to the hostesses in the dining room, whose annual salaries [ranged] from $6,000 to over $200,000!”^{Footnote 80}

Second, the balance-sheet approach did not capture the process by which employers moved women and minorities from certain job categories into other types of positions, meaning it did not force a reconfiguration of internal ladders. Professors Neil Churchill and John Shank wrote: “Such reporting encourages companies to pirate minority and female executives from each other in order to beef up their ‘head count’ in any category. This sort of gamesmanship does little to advance the course of equal employment opportunity.”^{Footnote 81} Most companies did not report the progression of employees from lower-level jobs into management positions, which would require women and minorities relegated on lower-paid, lower-status, shorter ladders to gain access to managerial ladders. Also the conventional balance-sheet approach was a snapshot only: it did not measure “rate of progression,” meaning how effectively firms could develop current minority and female employees for promotions. Churchill and Shank wrote, “A measurement system that does not monitor this rate of development is seriously deficient,” failing to provide upward mobility for those with potential for management. As an alternative to the balance sheet, they recommended that firms capture and submit “flow” data that would show the number of people in each job category who remain in it from one period to the next or the number gaining mobility into another category.^{Footnote 82} Churchill and Shank recommended that federal guidelines require a flow approach, which could “be real teeth in the law.” Companies should not just measure the “current management mix” but rather should be focused on “current hiring rates and current promotion rates” that would monitor development of minority and female managers.^{Footnote 83} Academics and activists alike were recognizing that the current manner in which employers were implementing affirmative action had limitations for internal mobility.

Enforcing Affirmative Action: Toward Individual Onus

Besides advocating for more fluidity from clerical to managerial ladders, 9to5 wanted systemic affirmative action reviews of all firms with federal contracts. For 9to5, however, even the most vigilant regulators focused on correcting underutilization, which offered limited promise to the existing clerical workforce. And since the government allocated relatively few resources to compliance relative to the scale of the mandates, the enforcement process could not hope to move beyond underutilization. Even in the 1970s, before President Ronald Reagan undermined affirmative action, reviews remained infrequent and somewhat random. Between 1973 and 1981, eleven thousand establishments were reviewed, or about 10 percent of all federal contractors.^{Footnote 84} And if regulators conducted reviews, often they mismanaged them. The failure of the government to systemically review industries shifted the burden of enforcement to individual workers and their advocates.

9to5 found an ally in Carol Greenwald, the Massachusetts banking commissioner, who took her duty to oversee the industry seriously. She investigated banking employment practices, working tirelessly to ameliorate ongoing sex and race discrimination. Greenwald claimed that the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which was charged with monitoring affirmative action compliance in the banking industry, rarely conducted reviews or forced meaningful action. In fact, in 1974 only thirty-five people nationwide were charged with enforcing affirmative action in the banking industry. And only 2 percent of all banks were reviewed in 1974.^{Footnote 85} The General Accounting Office (GAO) reported in 1976, “Treasury had not only failed to enforce the law, but had undermined the credibility of all affirmative action efforts by its record of nonenforcement.”^{Footnote 86} The Council of Economic Priorities (CEP) noted that “existing laws regarding fair employment are adequate, but enforcement by the Treasury Department is not. The department has never denied Federal funds to any major bank for noncompliance,” even though CEP found extensive employment bias at many institutions.^{Footnote 87} Inertia at the federal level meant that Greenwald and 9to5 were fighting an uphill battle in Boston-area workplaces.

When 9to5 filed formal charges of sex discrimination against New England Merchants National Bank of Boston in 1976, the U.S. Treasury mismanaged the compliance review. 9to5 had charged that the bank with denying women access to managerial training programs; forcing women to train men to be their supervisors; and denying women equal pay for comparable work. Treasury officials began to investigate Merchants soon after 9to5 submitted the charges, finding that the bank was not in compliance and was refusing to conciliate. However, no government action was taken against Merchants because Treasury claimed that it lost its own work records when it moved regional offices. The initial stages of the investigation began a second time in 1978, when the Office of Federal Contracts Compliance Programs (OFCCP), the new name for OFCC, gained enforcement authority from the Treasury Department. Four years later, the investigation was still in its initial stages. Greenwald perceived the federal government’s delaying tactics as “[undercutting] the credibility of 9to5 as an effective organization.”^{Footnote 88} 9to5 expressed outrage at the handling of the investigation, declaring that “this case [has been] mismanaged to the point where it is unclear whether the Dep. Of Labor or Merchants is conducting the investigation.”^{Footnote 89}

When complaining to the OFCCP about the investigation, 9to5 pointed to three events that it perceived as inequitable. First, in 1977, when Treasury found that Merchants was not in compliance, Treasury nonetheless continued to grant numerous extensions to Merchants, claiming that it was allowing the bank to decide whether or not it wanted to conciliate. Yet 9to5 claimed that Merchants was not moving toward conciliation; thus, a finding of noncompliance should have been just cause to begin enforcement proceedings. Second, when the OFCCP took over the case in 1978, Leonard Biermann, OFCCP regional officer, permitted Merchants to submit entirely new data. 9to5 had evidence that Merchants submitted revised records to Biermann. These records claimed that employees had received promotions and raises, although the employees themselves were not aware of receiving these benefits. Third, Biermann claimed that he lost the records of the Treasury interviews with Merchants employees; still, he did not conduct new interviews, which meant that the new investigation omitted workers’ perspectives.^{Footnote 90} Employees had lost the opportunity to formally contradict Merchants managers’ statements.

While 9to5 was outraged over the mishandling of the Merchants investigation, these and other types of dubious practices were occurring routinely, according to Greenwald. Yet the U.S. Treasury rarely took action against banks who manipulated data, which, according to Greenwald, “implicitly condoned” the practice of manipulating or even falsifying facts.^{Footnote 91} Furthermore, Treasury found banks in compliance even if they did not have the required affirmative action data on file. The GAO reported that from 1971 to 1975, Treasury had not once sanctioned a bank for noncompliance. It had never removed any federal deposits, which should have been the penalty implemented as a “potent sanction.”^{Footnote 92} Treasury did not even review the world’s largest bank, the Bank of America, until after a fair employment lawsuit had been filed in court.^{Footnote 93}

If workers themselves were going to have to be responsible for enforcement by way of forwarding complaints, then they needed as much data as possible about their own firms and about their legal rights. Many clericals reported that they had never seen their own companies’ affirmative action plans, and they were unsure if plans even existed in their own workplaces.^{Footnote 94} According to a contracts compliance program specialist in Treasury, information on compliance reviews were not “a matter of pubic record.”^{Footnote 95} To gather and distribute data, Greenwald, along with labor and civil rights advocates, conducted surveys on workforce demographics and pay equity in banking.^{Footnote 96} As Greenwald, 9to5, and their allies sought to publicize their findings on the industry’s practices, banking leaders attempted to silence their efforts.^{Footnote 97} The industry claimed that Greenwald’s report contained personal information about the managers of many financial firms; thus, the Massachusetts Savings Bank Association was able to obtain a court order to limit the report from public distribution. Only the banking commissioner, the attorney general, and the data processing personnel would have access to view it.^{Footnote 98}

Greenwald, 9to5, and their allies believed that the banking industry was trying to hide evidence of its noncompliance and that labor regulators were pawns of the banking industry.^{Footnote 99} Greenwald claimed that initially the OFCCP regional director seemed interested in her survey, maintaining that it could help him find discriminatory patterns in the industry. Yet after the court order muzzling the data, the director recanted, stating that the report would be “of minimal importance to us . . . [and] would not help us target a bank for an affirmative action compliance review.”^{Footnote 100} What could account for the OFCCP’s changing interest? Greenwald believed that the Massachusetts Savings Bank Association exerted “improper influence” on the Department of Labor and on the OFCCP, leading the regional OFCCP to decide that he should disregard the 1978 findings on bank employment patterns.^{Footnote 101}

Given the unreliability of regulators, Greenwald and 9to5 wanted to make sure that the public could gain access to their data. To overcome the court order, Greenwald omitted specific names from the report and used the Freedom of Information Act to release the survey in January 1979.^{Footnote 102} The survey results confirmed the presence of inequitable pay and discriminatory employment practices in banking.^{Footnote 103} In response to the report, the director of the OFCCP assured 9to5 that his agency was committed to regulating banks and that it had thirteen reviews scheduled in the New England region for 1979.^{Footnote 104} This data, along with the industry’s attempt to silence the findings, further propelled 9to5 to keep a vigilant watch on the banking sector and its regulators alike.

This pattern of lax enforcement, whereby employees had to lobby for state action, held true in the insurance industry as well where women workers were relegated to the lowest-paid office jobs. Women constituted 87 percent of the clerical workers in Boston insurance industries.^{Footnote 105} Yet at these same insurance firms, 58 percent of full-time file clerks made less than $6,200 dollars per year, a salary considered to be around or below the poverty line.^{Footnote 106} Many full-time clericals served as head of their households, yet they were eligible for food stamps and other government subsidies.^{Footnote 107} Economic security and upward mobility were either elusive or nonexistent for these working women. Yearly raises often did not keep up with the costs of living. Furthermore, insurance employers rarely promoted women into higher-paying positions.^{Footnote 108}

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was responsible for monitoring the insurance industry, and within HEW, the Social Security Administration (SSA) was assigned to conduct reviews.^{Footnote 109} Although all insurance companies with federal contracts were required by executive order to have an affirmative action plan, only if the SSA decided to review the company did the corporation have to submit its plan. Thus, unless the SSA requested the plan, no one really knew if the company had a plan or if it was effective or substantial. The SSA reviewed companies depending on the time and staff available, or it might pursue a company if given a reason to investigate.^{Footnote 110} Sometimes companies resisted the review process, arguing that personnel information was private, even if eventually they submitted the necessary information.^{Footnote 111} Such disputes cost the SSA and HEW time and money given their scarce human and financial resources.^{Footnote 112}

9to5 believed that the SSA should have more comprehensive data about as many insurance companies as possible. It sent its 1974 report on the condition of women office workers to the SSA, presenting data about low salaries and sex segregation in the Boston insurance workforce.^{Footnote 113} According to 9to5, almost 60 percent of the Boston insurance labor force was comprised of women, but 86 percent of female employees held low-wage clerical positions. 9to5 wrote, “No one could accuse the Insurance Industry in Boston of not hiring women. . . . But where are these many women employed within the companies?” Only 2 percent of women in insurance earned over $10,000, while 51 percent of men earned above that amount. 9to5 blamed weak affirmative action enforcement for the continued clustering of women in low-paying jobs. To 9to5, sex segregation existed because federal guidelines should require that firms work to remedying overutilization. The organization viewed the hiring and promotional practices at these firms as not just unfair but illegal as well.^{Footnote 114}

The SSA agreed to take the 9to5 report into account when selecting offices for reviews.^{Footnote 115} Furthermore, the SSA sent two compliance officers to Boston in early 1975 to meet with 9to5 insurance committee members, advising them on how to initiate complaints. The SSA officers disclosed that “the best way to get action” was to file a charge with the SSA, the OFCCP, or both, and then lobby the SSA to launch the review. Although 9to5 reported that it had a “good” meeting with the SSA, it remained dissatisfied with the overall investigation model.^{Footnote 116} The SSA was primarily investigating complaints that had been forwarded by specific charging parties; 9to5 wanted a more systemic review of all insurance companies to achieve more far-reaching change.

Nevertheless, 9to5 issued a complaint against the affirmative action plan at the insurance firm Marsh & McLennan. Boston 9to5 and two sister organizations, Chicago’s Women Employed and San Francisco’s Women Organized for Employment, launched a tri-city campaign against what was then the largest insurance brokerage firm in the world. These organizations insisted that Marsh “begin obeying the equal opportunity laws,” and they argued that the goals and timetables set by personnel managers were inadequate to remedy the existing discrimination. Working women’s organizations claimed that Marsh was not in compliance because women were clustered in the lowest-paying clerical positions. Only 4.4 percent of the 1,101 officials, managers, and supervisors in all of Marsh’s offices worldwide were women. However, 82 percent of the women employed by Marsh were in low-paying clerical jobs. And of the almost 6,000 total employees, only 214 were black women (and 181 of those were clericals).^{Footnote 117} In its 1974 affirmative action plan, Marsh declared that it would try to fill 19 percent of all positions that pay $10,400 per year with women. Clericals’ advocates were outraged. “That means 81% of those jobs will remain in the male domain. The [Affirmative Action] Guide goes on to say that this 19% ‘goal’ need not even be accomplished in one year!”^{Footnote 118} 9to5 perceived the Marsh plan as inequitable and not complying with affirmative action guidelines. However, it did in fact fulfill Department of Labor requirements by reporting current underutilization areas and setting goals for improvement.

There was clearly a disconnect between what 9to5 saw as fair, even as legal, and what businesses were required to do to avoid penalty. 9to5 viewed Marsh as engaging in illegal employment practices because its affirmative action plan sought to fill only 19 percent of higher-paying jobs with women over a period of several years instead of immediately. Women Employed Chicago wrote, “[Marsh’s] discriminatory employment practices are clearly illegal. We may not be able to change their basic philosophy about women, but we can force them to obey the laws.” What did the law require from the perspective of the clerical coalition? Marsh should develop “meaningful goals and timetables for training and promoting women and minorities” unlike its current affirmative action plan. It also recommended regular salary reviews, raising the salary range for many positions, as well as establishing written job descriptions, internal job posting, and on-the-job training. In addition, “[career] ladders should be instituted with bridge positions allowing clericals to move into professional positions.”^{Footnote 119} When the women’s organizations met with a Marsh vice president of personnel, they received answers that were only partially satisfactory. The vice president claimed that Marsh was committed to affirmative action even though the 1976 Affirmative Action Guide would not be available to employees. When asked about written job descriptions and personnel standards, he claimed that written standard practices seemed too “rigid.” Although Marsh would begin a job-posting system on January 1, 1976, it would only post nonmanagement positions. Clericals continued to lack access to managerial positions as the Marsh vice president signaled that clericals were not qualified to apply for them anyway.^{Footnote 120}

Following the Marsh campaign, the 9to5 insurance committee devised a three-month plan to improve affirmative action enforcement at the state and federal levels. One goal of the campaign was to lobby officials at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and at the OFCCP, placing pressure on the agencies to review reported offenders. To engage more insurance clericals in the cause, 9to5 decided to produce and distribute an insurance newsletter, which would encourage women to evaluate their own company’s affirmative action practices.^{Footnote 121} 9to5 initiated task forces at particular Boston companies so that it could assist employees in constructing “criteria for what we [the employees] view as an acceptable a.a. plan.” To pressure companies to more fully commit to affirmative action, 9to5 publicized the companies with strong plans versus those with weak plans.^{Footnote 122}

9to5 empowered employees by disseminating information about affirmative action directly to them. In a worksheet, “How to Evaluate Your Company,” 9to5 recommended that changes in personnel practices could remedy the sex-segregated nature of clerical work. For instance, for a common problem such as lack of access to promotions, employees should urge their managers to implement the affirmative action solution of “job posting.” According to 9to5, affirmative action mandated that “all jobs should be conspicuously posted,” preferably internally for two weeks. For clericals who were told that their experience was not relevant for internal openings, employees should make sure that the company was using “fair requirements” when choosing applicants to hire. In other words, employers might have required certain irrelevant skills or experience purposefully to exclude clerical women from consideration. “The company should look at related job experience, and periodically survey to find qualified women in the company,” according to 9to5. If clericals had lacked mobility for numerous years, employees should suggest that “training programs” become part of the company’s affirmative action plan. Training programs that would “bridge clerical and other jobs should be provided, in order to eliminate dead-end positions.”^{Footnote 123}

Some Boston insurance companies, when pushed to implement affirmative action, started to alter their policies regarding internal job postings and written job descriptions. Frank B. Hall and Massachusetts Mutual began internal postings in 1976.^{Footnote 124} Also the OFCCP began to negotiate with Prudential in 1976, pushing the company to institute more equitable hiring and promotion policies. Employees from Liberty Mutual, Blue Cross, and Aetna gathered to read and discuss their affirmative action plans, and to make suggestions for improvements. At Aetna, several women met with company managers and secured job postings.^{Footnote 125} 9to5 filed charges against Travelers for failing to institute internal postings, provide accurate job descriptions, and offer training for promotions.^{Footnote 126} Once 9to5 filed complaints with the SSA, Travelers started posting some opportunities on the lunchroom bulletin board.^{Footnote 127}

By early 1977, change was occurring in a piecemeal fashion. However, many Boston-area insurance companies still were not following clericals’ ideas about affirmative action compliance. 9to5 detailed the practices of eleven firms, accounting for their current policies on job posting, written job descriptions, employee training, and promotions. Most companies did not offer training for promotions to their clerical workers; training for promotions was available for those working in sales, management, or underwriting but not for clerical work. And postings were common for “lower level positions” or “lower level clerical positions” but not for managerial openings.^{Footnote 128} This data revealed that finding and accessing higher-paid positions remained elusive for clerical women, even within their own companies. Many companies preferred to hire externally for professional positions rather than train or promote an internal clerical worker.