The introduction of the typewriter to 19th century workplaces had a significant impact on the role of women. It transformed the world of work and created new opportunities in business for women, as employers and employees. Find out how the typewriter enabled women to move into more diverse types of work and advance equality in the workplace and the public sphere.

The Industrial Revolution

The typewriter appeared in the latter half of the 19th century, a period of massive industrial and societal change. The Industrial Revolution had paved the way for the increasing dominance of big business, bringing fundamental changes to ways of working. As bureaucracy increased, so did the requirement for documentation and processing. With the emergence of the typewriter and the need to create documents quickly, a new role developed: that of the typist.

Opportunities for women

Office work was traditionally a man's occupation, with office clerks creating handwritten records and correspondence for their employers. During the First World War, as many men left the workplace to fight on the front lines, women began to move into occupations usually undertaken by men. This included heavy industry and office work. Typing roles were regarded as suitable work for women because they didn't take jobs away from men. They provided employment for the middle classes who traditionally had not worked and, later, they provided options for the educated working classes. Typing provided women with the potential for greater financial independence. It also enabled entrepreneurial women and those with funds to set up their own businesses, train and employ others.

Typing schools

Typing schools opened to meet the demand for typists. Students could also learn shorthand and bookkeeping at these schools. By 1901, 99% of typists in Scotland were women. While men also used typewriters, they did not think of themselves as typists. As a less well-paid job, there was often an assumption that typing did not need a lot of knowledge or skill, but this perception was far from the truth. Typing roles required a broad skill set which went beyond simple copying. Typists required enormous knowledge, including different areas of business and other subjects, and they were often fluent in several languages.

Ethelinda Hadwen

One woman who took advantage of the opportunities offered by typewriters was Ethelinda Hadwen. Born in Lancashire in 1863, she was the daughter of a cotton mill owner, studying in Paris during her teens. After returning to the UK in 1886, she opened a typewriting office in Edinburgh with her business partner Elizabeth Fleming. The office provided typing services to local firms and was the first of its kind in Scotland. The average typewriter office employed four or five people, usually women, and offered typing and translating for businesses, banks, lawyers, authors, architects, and professors. These were businesses where women weren't only workers, but unusually for the time, also employers.

Women's suffrage

Women-led typewriter firms helped to advance the campaign to give women the vote. Ethelinda became a leading member of the Edinburgh branch of the National Society for Women's Suffrage. As increasing numbers of women proved they could run businesses as well as any man, some of the arguments against giving the vote to women weakened.

Public office

The typewriter was not only a campaigning tool but also a key enabler for women to move into the public sphere. There was a drive to elect more women to parish councils and school boards, demonstrating their ability to hold public office. Ethelinda became a member of Edinburgh City Parish Council. In 1898, the Woman’s Signal magazine reported Ethelinda as saying,

In 1906, Ethelinda was elected to the Edinburgh School Board. During her campaign she capitalised on her twenty years of business experience. Before addressing a meeting of electors at Regent Road School, she was introduced as "a business lady" who was "well qualified to be a member of the School Board." Ethelinda’s life shows a clear link between the suffragettes and the power of the typewriter.

Sholes & Glidden typewriter

In 1904, Ethelinda donated a Sholes & Glidden machine to the Museum. It was too out of date to be useful in her business, but worth preserving for the decor and design. Christopher Latham Sholes and Carlos Glidden developed the Sholes & Glidden typewriter. The manufacturer was E. Remington & Sons. It was the first typewriter to feature the QWERTY keyboard, now the standard keyboard layout for Latin-based languages, and as there was no shift key, it only printed capitals.

The typist in popular fiction

In the late 19th century, the term "New Woman" was used to describe educated and financially independent women. This description included female typists. From the turn of the 20th century the "New Woman typist" became a character in popular fiction. It was both a positive and negative stereotype in the public's imagination.

The depiction of the "typewriter girl" in books and films was often unflattering, reflecting little of the reality of typists’ lives. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featured a typist, Mary Sutherland, in his 1891 short story, 'A Case of Identity'. It's thought Conan Doyle was the first author to use the typewriter as a plot device. In the story, Mary Sutherland consults Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective, over concerns about her missing fiancé, and a typewriter is key to solving the case. Holmes works out that someone has used a particular typewriter to type a specific letter. He solves the case by looking at the idiosyncrasies of the machine. Unfortunately, the story depicts Mary Sutherland as a character with little substance.

Some literary works also highlighted the positive impact of typewriters on women's lives. In 'The Twelve-Pound Look' by Peter Pancreator and JM Barrie, a woman saves up to buy a typewriter so she can support herself and leave her arrogant husband. Another example is 'Dracula', the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker, which depicts Mina Murray as an independent and resourceful woman.

Advancing equal pay

The typewriter enabled women to enter the business world, helping to advance equality in the workplace. Inadvertently, it also helped to define the role of typist/secretary as lower than the male clerk role it replaced. Compared to men in similar roles, the pay of women was much lower until the introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970. Employers viewed women as an attractive source of cheap labour because they could employ them to do similar work to men, but for half of the price.

Jobs associated with women, such as domestic, administrative or care work, were or became lower-paid jobs, but one exception was computer programming. Initially, programming jobs were seen as low-paid women's work akin to typing, when punch-card systems were in place. As men entered these roles it became an increasingly well-paid profession.

The 1970 Equal Pay Act and the 2010 Equality Act brought some improvements to women and men receiving equal pay for the same work. Today, a gender pay gap still exists, especially at more senior levels. Some organisations tackle the pay gap by offering greater flexibility in working roles, but as the history of typewriters shows, there is also a need to be alert to assumptions about the value of different types of work.

Further information

Listen to Alison Taubman, a former National Museums Scotland curator, discuss how typewriters provided a key opening into the world of work, propelled women into the public sphere, and played a major role in the fight for women's suffrage in Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 2021.