Back in 1972, some colleagues and I were sitting in a circle on our lunch hour talking about our jobs. We talked about low pay, unequal pay, training men to be our own supervisors, and having to do favors for our bosses.
I think it all hit home for us the day a student walked into the office, looked one of us straight in the eye, and asked, “Isn’t anybody here?” Well, I’m here. Can’t you see me?
Out of those conversations, an organization grew. I was one of 10 women office workers in Boston who founded 9 to 5, which was the direct inspiration for Jane Fonda’s blockbuster movie. Dolly Parton’s toe-tapping theme song “9 to 5” quickly rose to the top of the charts. Along with her touching and hilarious performance as the sweet but mightily annoyed Doralee Rhodes, the beloved anthem boosted our efforts to win equality, higher pay, and respect for working women. Among her many achievements, Parton made a giant contribution to women’s rights on the job.
Women were up against a lot. At that time, sexual harassment was perfectly legal. You could be fired for being pregnant. In the newspapers, there were two columns: “Help Wanted Male” and “Help Wanted Female.” Millions of women were pouring into the workplace, and one in three was an office worker. As the clerical workforce grew by leaps and bounds, so did a sense of injustice among the women whose job it was to type, file, staple, mimeograph, and photocopy.
Yet in the downtown office workforce, there was little or no history of collective action. When you had a problem, you were likely to think of it as your own personal dilemma. Maybe you should dress better or take a class. The idea of sitting across the table to negotiate with management was unimaginable to many of us. Employers, of course, were intent on keeping it that way.
Bit by bit, though, we perfected the collective art of raising a ruckus, and things began to change. Across the city, we won millions of dollars in back pay and raises. We formed a national association with members in every state and chapters in dozens of cities.
Then came the big time. Enter Jane Fonda. Karen Nussbaum, one of our leaders, knew the celebrated actor from the peace movement, and she kept her up-to-date on our doings. When Jane told us she wanted to make a movie about the concerns of office workers, we were thrilled.
As Jane remembered it, one day on the radio she heard Dolly Parton singing her song “Two Doors Down,” about a woman who pulls herself out of a funk and goes after what she wants. As she listened, she had a vision of Dolly, with her long, painted fingernails, working as a secretary. She decided to ask Dolly and Lily Tomlin, a great comic force, to join the cast. Both agreed.
Dolly was already a superstar as a singer, songwriter, and record producer. But she’d never acted in a film before. She treasured her connection with her country roots and knew that working with Jane might be a risk to her career. Indeed, audiences sometimes booed when she mentioned Jane. But Dolly was a consummate bridge-builder, able to thread a careful course among all varieties of fans. She was also a quick study who had no trouble holding her own within the trio of stars.
The typical movie of the time would have treated Dolly’s character, with the big hair and the skin-tight outfits, as a figure of fun. But instead of ridiculing Doralee, this movie took her side. As people on the set remember it, one day Dolly took out her guitar. “I’ve got a song,” she announced. Simulating the sound of typing, she clicked her fingernails to establish the beat. Then she launched into her infectious tune with its pitch-perfect lyrics.
The song expressed the grievances and the dreams of legions of working women—and men. It begins with an awakening (“Stumble out of bed”), directs some angry energy at management (“You’re just a step on the boss-man’s ladder”), and then summons a sense of common purpose (“You’re in the same boat with a lot of your friends”). Finally, it ends in triumph: “The tide’s gonna turn, and it’s all gonna roll your way!”
9 to 5 was the second-highest-grossing film of 1980, after The Empire Strikes Back, another epic battle between good and evil.9 to 5 was a comedy, but it told the truth. In the movie, the three women get together and it becomes necessary for them to kidnap their boss. Once he’s gone, the funny thing is that no one really notices. The three women quickly institute a slew of new, worker-friendly policies, like flextime and job sharing and on-site childcare—all the things our organization was campaigning for—and find that the company runs better than it ever did.
Women office workers had never seen ourselves as the main characters on the big screen, and the mood in the theaters was electric. We gasped, hooted, applauded, and shouted out advice. There were shrieks of laughter, waves of applause, shouts of “Right on!” 9 to 5 was the second-highest-grossing film of 1980, after The Empire Strikes Back, another epic battle between good and evil. It made clear the unfair boss was the problem, not the women. The film portrayed not just the problems but the solutions: not just getting women out of the typing pool but also making the typing pool a better place to work. And the means to those solutions was women banding together.
While Jane Fonda was energetic and explicit in her support for the working women’s movement, Dolly took a different approach. When a radio journalist asked if she considered herself a feminist, she responded, “No, I do not. I think of myself as a woman in business.” Another time, though, when Time magazine asked her the same question, she said this: “I suppose I am a feminist, if I believe that women should be able to do anything they want to.” Many participants in our movement felt the same way. They didn’t see themselves as part of the women’s liberation movement, but they believed passionately in fairness and equality on the job. Our organization worked hard to carve out a comfortable place for such women, and Dolly’s outsize presence helped us do it.
Rather than a spokeswoman, Dolly was a model: hardworking, supremely good at what she was doing, and full of empathy for her fellow human beings.
The movie, the song, and Dolly’s embodiment of grace and courage had a significant effect on public consciousness. Before the film came out, we had to argue about whether there was or was not discrimination at the workplace. We had to push women to understand that they were being treated unfairly. We had to convince bosses that women didn’t actually want to be stuck in low-paying, dead-end jobs.
9 to 5 ended the debate. In one scene, as the three women are moaning about their problems over drinks, Jane’s character bursts out, “We’ve got to do something! Can’t we—complain?” It’s a laugh line, but as with so many lines in the film, it’s a line with a serious import. For millions of women, getting past complaining was the critical challenge. Through our movement, women were joining together for change, and now the movie showed Jane, Lily, and Dolly doing the same thing. It was a vital contribution to our cause.
In 1975, the Service Employees International Union offered us a charter to form a woman-run union, and our District 925 SEIU got underway nationwide. Not just SEIU, but many other unions started investing new resources in organizing women workers, and they discovered that union drives in woman-dominated workplaces, especially those with a high percentage of Black women, were more likely to succeed. That was a surprise to those who, early on, told us to forget it, women couldn’t be organized. They could be, and they were—with a big boost from Dolly, Jane, Lily, and their team.
Our organization didn’t share in any of the financial profits from the film. But what we did get was priceless. By combining the ideas of the women’s movement, the power of the labor movement, and the glamour of Hollywood, we were able to win major advances at the workplace that still endure.
In an interview with The Washington Post when the film was released, Jane Fonda’s business partner Bruce Gilbert made a prediction: “Getting coffee,” he said, “will never be the same after this movie comes out.” He was right. One morning on the bus, soon after the movie opened in the theaters, I overheard a women talking to her seat mate: “So I said to him, ‘No, I will not make your coffee!’ I just saw 9 to 5!”
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