Female Detective
I want to write a female detective murder mystery. I have 15 characters; 14 women and 1 man. I want the male to be the secretary for the, Cavalcade Detective Agency. He is well educated, charming, and has an odd dynamic with my protagonist, similar to Della Street and Perry Mason. I want people to try to talk to him because he is the man so my detective can intervene and take charge. The problem is with the male as a secretary what decade's would be appropriate. I know it would have been unheard of before the depression, but what place in time after the depression? I need the client's to be uncomfortable, but not shocked. I want my protagonist to be assertive, and unshakable.
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If you set the story in an era where it is generally considered shameful for a man to be under the authority of a woman, there are plenty of situations where a man might be in a subordinate position due to peculiar circumstances.
He owes a gob-ton of money to the boss detective's family and is working for her in order to pay it off interest-free.
She's the widow of a detective who got killed while working on a case, and she took over the business. The secretary is their son.
He and the boss detective are a husband-and-wife team, but after a run-in with some local underworld low-lifes he is now physically incomplete—missing, say, part of one leg—and so he's semi-retired, doing the office work while she does the leg-work.
He's her uncle, and a detective in his own right, but he wants to eventually retire and is acting as the boss detective's mentor until she gets up to speed.
I can't see it hard to come up with a plausible back-story to explain how the fellow got there, and a good back-story will provide grist for the story-telling.
I would suggest perusing the following list: American Women Firsts.
I have listed excerpts below that definitely involved women being in charge of men, and men obviously accepting that. My conclusion is, you could plausibly put your detective anywhere in 1943 to 1972 with real-life precedent for your man to point at. Definitely in the 1950's, if you are thinking of the post WW-II vibe. In fact, I'd likely set it in the 50's, and make the man an ex-Navy soldier that had served under Anna Der-Vartainian (1950). Or perhaps a former IRS agent that served under Georgia Neese Clark, the first woman Treasurer of the USA (1949).
So he's got some chops of his own (soldiering or investigating or mathematical), and is comfortable with his woman boss, and likes the excitement and/or law enforcement aspect of the work.
1943 Nellie Neilson was the first woman to serve as president of the American Historical Association.
1949 Georgia Neese Clark was the first woman Treasurer of the United States, under President Harry Truman.
1950 16 December: Anna Der-Vartanian became the U.S. Navy's first female master chief petty officer; this made her the first female master chief in the Navy, as well as the first female E-9 in the entire U.S. Armed Services.
1953 Oveta Culp Hobby was the first woman to serve as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.
1972 Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington were the first women in the United States promoted to brigadier general.
1972 Katharine Graham was the first female Fortune 500 CEO, as CEO of the Washington Post company.
Before the Depression most office workers were male (clerks, accountants, bookkeepers), with the exception of stenographers who were overwhelmingly female. According to OfficeMuseum.com the numbers rapidly shifted through the 1930s. The webpage lists several sample sources and dates, mostly from unions, large firms, and government offices. Small businesses like your detective agency could set up their own rules, and probably did.
If your male secretary could be a little older, potentially older than the detective, he might be from an earlier era where office gender parity was more equal, but a male secretary wouldn't necessarily be a shocker in any decade – in fact it might even be seen as an extravagance, or a sign of prosperity since there would be an assumption he is paid more than a woman, therefore the business must be doing well. It would also have been assumed well into the 1970s that female secretaries would leave when they got married, so the gender balance would probably be many young women in disposable jobs with high turnover, but more older males in supervising and specialized office roles where they had been promoted from the pool of workers. An older male might be seen as an asset, having been a supervisor or worked for years in a previous office, where as the majority of female secretaries would not be permanent or career-oriented.
The taboo would be him having a female superior. All-female offices often had female superiors, but it probably would have been unusual to have a female boss over a man in an office setting. I couldn't find any numbers or references to estimate female supervisors (office managers) over mixed offices.
There were many female-owned businesses in the early 20th century, but they were legally vulnerable. A list of early women entrepreneurs is a list of women whose businesses were were attacked with spurious lawsuits, often by divorcing husbands who claimed they had run the company for her. Women were excluded from regional business associations through the 1980s, cutting them off from resources and peers that would have helped navigate legal and bureaucratic hurdles. Many female business owners countered their exclusion by being philanthropists (a divorce battle for Annie Malone's hair product empire had the husband using business and political resources against his wife while she countered with social and church organizations). Expect every businesswoman to have encountered men targeting her business as an easy mark, not because women were viewed as inferior but because laws and business services (banks, political advocates, social clubs) excluded them, making their businesses harder to defend (minorities were similarly excluded, which left them vulnerable to mafia and protection rackets – the cost of doing business). Using a frontman as a business representative to gain access (Remington Steele) was normal and would have opened many business opportunities but leave her vulnerable to that man later claiming the entire company as his own.
You might want to add a few more men unless his gender is supposed to stand out as a defining characteristic, create more balance.
Late 1960s and early 1970s would be plausible. Men in jobs normally considered the domain of women were rare but not unheard of. Strong women were entering the limelight.
Any earlier and the clients are more likely to be shocked rather than discomfited.
It sounds like you want to prevent the Remington Steele effect where a male non detective played a beard allowing the female detective to get clients she otherwise would not have and solve cases.
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