{"product_id":"expect-great-things-how-the-katharine-gibbs-school-revolutionized-the-american-workplace-for-women","title":"Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fun and fascinating social history of the famed Katharine Gibbs School, which from the 1910s to the 1960s, trained women for executive secretary positions but surreptitiously was instilling the selfconfidence and strategic knowhow necessary for them to claim equality, power, and authority in the wider world.Its a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday synonymous with supplying secretariesalways properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white glovesto male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a Gibbs girl on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 120 words per minute into the Csuite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool to assume positions of power on the other side of the desk. And Gibbs graduates did just that, paving the way for 21stcentury women to succeed in any profession they choose.Katharine Gibbs was one her own success stories. She started her school when, as a 46yearold widow, she was left nearbroke with two young sons. The school taught typing and stenography but Gibbs also hired accomplished professors from elite colleges to teach academic subjectsit was a wellrounded education that produced early feminists ready to tackle the sexism of their era. Expect great things! was her motto and her philosophy. Within a decade shed opened schools in three elegant locations. With nostalgic period photographs throughout, Expect Great Things! takes us back to Katie Gibbss life and tells the stories of the women she influenced. We meet Gibbs graduates who worked for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Howard Hughes, Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe. Others forged pathfinding roles as an Emmywinning television star, a womens rights advisor to four U.S. presidents, a writer of Wonder Woman comic books, the head of the Womens Marines, a bestselling young adult author, and a U.S. Ambassador.For readers of The Barbizon and Come Fly the World, Expect Great Things! reveals the seismic impact the Katharine Gibbs school had on the American workplaceand on womens opportunities today.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Algonquin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47952708927733,"sku":"DADAX1643753177","price":13.08,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/5804\/8501\/files\/817xYsUIaAL.jpg?v=1775476020","url":"https:\/\/ergodebooks.com\/products\/expect-great-things-how-the-katharine-gibbs-school-revolutionized-the-american-workplace-for-women","provider":"Ergodebooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}