Business
Women who rose in demanding careers often paid with the feeling that they had failed as wives and mothers. Even a hired nanny did not settle the conflict. Professional achievement and family fulfilment were set up as a trade-off, not a combination.
For women of that era, putting up with snobbery, open sexism and what would now be called sexual harassment was treated as the normal toll for entering professional life. Unequal pay belonged to the same bargain.
Gains for women at work should be checked, not assumed. The same tensions between career, family, pay and respect persisted decades later. A slogan of how far women have come can hide how much is unchanged.
A woman entering a male-run workplace was advised to secure her money up front, because promises of later fairness were routinely broken. In that world, getting the pay settled early protected her better than trusting future goodwill.
Getting hired was only half the battle. Women also had to enter informal male networks where real influence was traded, often over drinks and entertaining clients. Being shut out of those rituals limited how far they could rise.
Business relationships were greased with heavy drinking, long liquor-soaked lunches and even sexual 'entertainment' for clients. Excess was built into how deals were kept. Firms sometimes had to change their buildings, such as removing office doors, to curb what went on behind them.
When an industry shifts to a new creative style, the change is not only artistic. It pushes out people whose skills belonged to the old way, so a revolution in method also works as a purge of careers.
Women who had made it passed hard-won lessons to those coming up, from blunt warnings about pay to coaching in creative work that actually sells. This informal mentoring was how newcomers learned to survive a system not built for them.