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My mother (a typing teacher) told me never to admit I could type.

My mother had me take typing in high school so I’d “always have a job,” but when I reached a jr executive level, I kept it a secret.

Very sensible.

How retired is he? I think I caught the tail end of this era when I was a student but it was gone by the time I became a lecturer. (The local admin staff are still essential but not in that way.)

I caught the tail end too! But the expectations of male academics did not change, nor did the assumption that any woman was there to serve you. It's partially why student evaluations are gendered.

I know what you mean - how often do male and female academics organise catering for events?

As a professional industrial cleaner in the 1980s, who did a lot of work in the university, shampooing carpets etc., I quickly learnt that the power and authority in a department lay with the professor's secretary

I’m trying to understand the point you’re making here. Is it that women had more power on the 80s as secretaries to profs than we do in the 21st C. as actual profs?

No, simply that the real power in a university department in he 1980's was in the professor's secretaries office not in the professor's office but the male professor was credited as head of department with that power. The women didn't get the credit they deserved

I have no doubt of it! But it's like saying women should be content with being the power behind the scenes, instead of being credited and paid for the work that they do, if you get what I mean.

#HerNameIsMissTriggs (after the Riana Duncan cartoon)

I never noticed that, he said, not disbelieving me exactly, but that's what such an apparently impartial observation is doing. But you wouldn't notice it, would you, I said, when the system is working for you. #AcademicSky

When I started my first role after my PhD (in about 2003), I was immediately asked to organise the washing up after the group meetings. My supervisor also used to ask either me or a female PhD student to do his typing if his secretary was away. Never asked a male student or postdoc...

Was he an anthropologist and didn't notice? Because that's pretty bad.

Because admin staff were mostly women, female academics were considered equivalent. There to perform service, not to undertake intellectual work. Of course it was more complex than this, but that's the broad picture. #AcademicSky

My typing speed (which is high) has, at some institutions, been a carefully guarded secret, for exactly this sort of reason...

It is the same in business. If the meeting features attendees all at the same level, the female attendees will be the ones asked to make coffee or hand out printed decks or do other admin work while the guys networked. I would simply say no, thank you. And, of course, be labeled 'difficult.'

I'm remembering a political round table where Sarah Palin went around pouring everyone else's water.

An undergrad professor once shared that at one of her previous offices, she'd often have students asking her to make copies. Initially, she thought they just wanted help working the copier but eventually realized that, despite her having her own office filled with books and it saying "Prof. [Last