The office was a male-dominated environment- many women were still dependent on their husbands for income.
Technology was sparse, with workers producing documents with pen and paper. Due to the lack of technology, most of office employees had the same 9-5 working day as when the office closed connectivity was very limited.
In the 1970s more women were beginning to enter the workplace. The Equal Pay Act of 1970 made it illegal to pay women less for doing an identical job as men. This was followed by the Sexual Discrimination Act of 1975 which made it illegal to discriminate against women in education and recruitment.
In terms of technology, typewriters had become commonplace in the office environment. The more modern versions were designed to minimise noise in the workplace.
With Margaret Thatcher becoming Britain’s first and only female Prime Minister, women had a strong female leading the country.
Technology entered the office space and women in the workplace was more common.
New technology was prevalent from the 1990s to the 2000s. Computers and fax machines were becoming common fixtures in the office environment – aiding in the growth of many global partnerships. Mobile phones were starting to become more accessible to the average person.
The dawn on the World Wide Web made working remotely much easier. Laptops and mobile phones made it easier for employees to be connected to the office 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was now uncommon for office workers not to have access to a computer.
Technology dominates the work environment today- and are forever changing. Mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones, as well as cloud storage, have made it easy for people to connect with anyone, anywhere in the world.
Women and the Workplace
Women's journey in the office space has been convoluted, with many saying the equality battle is nowhere near finished. One to the reasons SmartPA attracts so many women into becoming a Personal Assistant is that technology makes it very easy to work remotely from anywhere and even up the work-life balance in a way that commuting and office life can never achieve.