Switchboard Operators

United States phone operator, circa 1911.

      Emma Nutt became the first female telephone operator on 1 September 1878 when she started working for the Boston Telephone Dispatch company. More women began to replace men within this sector of the workforce for several reasons. The companies observed that women were generally more courteous to callers. However, a contributing factor to women entering this workforce was because women's labor was cheap in comparison to men's. Specifically, women were paid from one half to one quarter of a man's salary.

      Furthermore, not all women were selected for the position of a switchboard operator. The majority of females that received this position were classified as young, attractive, and single to portray the appropriate image as "a weaver of speech" that society held of switchboard operators. Media portraying the workers through sexualized images of "All American Girls" was a popular media tactic deployed by telephone industry advertisers and public relations. These images and portrayal of women decreased and helped mend the gap between private and public sphere life; however, at the same time, degraded women in the process; whereas men were easily accepted into both spheres. Therefore, for advertisement reasons and acceptance of women into the public sphere, switchboard operators were perceived and constructed to be "innocent and efficient, desirable yet unattainable, businesslike but adept as soothing the harried and demanding captain of industry of the public sphere as well as the stereotypically portrayed petty and demanding matron of the private sphere." (214). Although the telephone provided opportunity and, some would argue liberation, into the work force, there were restrictions that disabled women to be themselves. For instance, their script was very strict and encouraged only a few statements that could be exchanged between operator and customer.

Paris telephone exchange, 1900.

      Ultimately, from an outside perspective, analyzing women as switchboard operators at a 'surface level', their increase participation in the public work sphere is beneficial and liberating. However, after analysing the telephone and its implications we can understand how there are patriarchal, gendered associations that come with it that contribute to the hierarchy of society. For instance, the telephone was viewed as a gateway that separated individuals, the same way a front door separates. It was viewed that the 'servant' should be the one to screen intrusions in regards to a ringing door. Similarly, the telephone was a viewed as a device that should be answered by a servant. Having women act as switchboard operators, labelled them as servants and reorganized them within society's hierarchy.

      Women of the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit, American bilingual female switchboard operators in World War I, were known colloquially as Hello Girls and were not formally recognized for their military service until 1978.

      Julia O'Connor, a former telephone operator, led the Telephone Operators' Strike of 1919 and the Telephone Operators' Strike of 1923 against New England Telephone Company on behalf of the IBEW Telephone Operators' Department for better wages and working conditions.

In 1982, in Bryant Pond, Maine, Susan Glines became the last switchboard operator for a hand-crank phone when that exchange was converted; manual central office switchboards continued in operation at rural points like Kerman, California and Wanaaring, New South Wales as late as 1991, but these were central-battery systems with no hand-cranked magnetos.

• Use of Women as Telephone Operators: Early History
• Training for Service, 1926, AT&T Archives
• How to Use the Dial Phone, 1927: Tragic Music??
• Switchboards, Old and New

The story of the women who ran the switchboard in Broome.

More Telephone Ephemera:

• Edge border of a telephone switchboard 
• Early Telephone from 1911
• Bad Telephone Service