The 9to5 Movement
An Overview
It's the 1970s. Women are entering the workforce more than ever, for a multitude of reasons, with varieties of experience. Every woman, however, is greeted with a glass ceiling years thick. No matter what your role is, you are automatically less important and expected to be less knowledgeable. From day one, you are expected to be near perfect, initially known as a "typewriter" yourself, yet many conversations with your boss are not about work at all. You are expected to run personal errands, fulfill needs for the boss' family, make him coffee, let him flirt, make fun, and belittle you, to keep your job. You make less than 65% of your male coworker's paycheck, but talk about it, and you're fired. It's a game that you can never win, so what happens next?
In Boston, Ellen Cassedy and Karen Nussbaum were employed as secretaries at Harvard. The two were appalled at the environment they found themselves in and started meeting with women feeling the same way. It started as small groups talking over lunches and evolved into a movement. They started creating newsletters pointing out the gender-based discrimination, telling stories from secretaries themselves, asking for submissions of thoughts, stories, and more, passing them out to women on the way to work. Then, they confronted Harvard's director of personnel, and nothing happened.
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"We are referred to as girls, until the day we retire without pension."
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Ellen Cassedy had applied to a program training movement organizers, and was accepted, studying at the Midwest Academy in Chicago, learning how to organize. With this information, she returned to Boston, and the women worked harder than ever. They were more daring and direct, talking to the clerical workers across the city, asking them the hard questions about how they were treated. Even if they were turned away, the goal was to get them to notice. They started holding demonstrations, speeches, gaining press, and as the term "sexual harassment" grew, they gave these women a plan to navigate all of it. 9to5 was established, and other cities were taking the same ideas and growing them, but the movement lacked the power to legally stand up for these women.
That's when they decided to unionize. This was not an easy process, either, but by using the laws ignored by employers against them, advocating for change, and exposing their boss' lies, 9to5 undeniably made the foundation cracks in these systems.
Jane Fonda noticed the work of this organization and saw an opportunity to bring these issues to a new level of recognition. Working with the leading women of 9to5, collaborating with Dolly Parton, Patricia Resnick, and Lily Tomlin, they created 9 to 5, a movie for women, by women. The story was created from Fonda interviewing clerical workers with one simple question: "Have you ever fantasized about killing your boss?"
9 to 5 not only skyrocketed the recognition of workplace feminism but showed the trials of the workplace in a hilarious way. This might have minimized the secretaries' experiences, if what they experienced was not so irrational and inexplicable, that seeing it on a screen was easily laughable. This movie captured the public, but on a deeper level, it was a call to action, and it worked.
It was because of an organization unlike anything seen before, that we've gotten to where we are today, and 9to5 is an inspiration for the future.
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"We at 9to5 would be drawing on the wisdom of the past while inventing our own way forward."
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Production Concept
George Contini, director of ‘9 to 5: The Musical’ at UGA, is grounded in the historical movement of 9to5 for women workers, whilst finding the balance in the essential humor within the play. With this production, he hopes to give the women of the 9to5 movement a voice, honoring the message behind the concept, which is to “show you can run an office without the boss, but you can’t run an office without the secretaries,” (Fonda, 155). He plans to centralize the references to fantasies and dreams that drive each of the women in the script, emphasizing the hope that drove women toward this movement. This show shifts between two decades, and Contini intends for the women to progress this modernization. Thus, a productive and successful work environment that is not only safe, but also full of opportunity, is clearly in their path. The men in this show will not be made to be more palatable to the audiences, instead represented honestly. So will the women, their characters recognized to have more in their lives than work; they have passions and dreams and goals separate from their current reality. He plans to embrace the fact that this play is a farce, grabbing the humor, messages, and plot, blending them into a delightful, yet effective, final piece.
The Creators: Dolly Parton
Born on January 19th, 1946, in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, Dolly grew up in a large family in a small mountain town. She got her start in music as a child in Knoxville, Tennessee, and went on to Nashville after completing high school. Her career blossomed, with Dolly quickly becoming perhaps the most famous female country singer ever, with songs like “Jolene”, and “I Will Always Love You”. With her experience as a southern woman in the industry at this time, Dolly eagerly joined forces with the other women on the movie “9 to 5”, writing the hit song that would help the movie become a household name. Working closely with Resnick, she went on to write the music and lyrics, in a similar style to the original song, of the musical adaptation. Now, Dolly is working on another Broadway musical: about her life.
The Creators: Patricia Resnick
Born on February 9th, 1953, in Miami, Florida, Patricia Resnick is a female screenwriter known for her feminist works. She got her break in the industry by interviewing Robert Altman for a paper at USC Film School, who then hired her. Working in the industry as a woman and lesbian in the 70s and 80s, Resnick was inspired by Fonda’s idea to make the 9to5 movement into a movie. She had already worked with Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda eagerly took her on as writer. After the massive success, Resnick went on to write the book for “9 to 5: The Musical”, and most notably has continued writing for “Mad Men” and other works to this day, putting female voices at the forefront of her stories.