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Source: Changes in Perception 103

their prominence, their importance. Yet they did not see themselves as
“role models.” They saw themselves not as women but as individuals.
They did not consider themselves as “representative” but as excep-
tional.
How the change occurred, and why, I leave to future historians to
explain. But when it happened around 1970, these great women lead-
ers became in effect “non-persons” for their feminist successors. Now
the woman who is not in the labor force, and not working in an occu-
pation traditionally considered “male,” is seen as unrepresentative
and as the exception.
This was noted as an opportunity by a few businesses, in particu-
lar, Citibank (cf. Chapter 7). It was not seen at all, however, by the
very industries in which women had long been accepted as profes-
sionals and executives, such as department stores, advertising agen-
cies, magazine or book publishers. These traditional employers of
professional and managerial women actually today have fewer
women in major positions than they had thirty or forty years ago.
Citibank, by contrast, was exceedingly macho—which may be one
reason why it realized there had been a change. It saw in the new per-
ception women had of themselves a major opportunity to court excep-
tionally able, exceptionally ambitious, exceptionally striving women;
to recruit them; and to hold them. And it could do so without compe-
tition from the traditional recruiters of career women. In exploiting a
change in perception, innovators, as we have seen, can usually count
on having the field to themselves for quite a long time.
5. A much older case, one from the early 1950s, shows a simi-
lar exploitation of a change in perception. Around 1950, the
American population began to describe itself overwhelmingly as
being “middle-class,” and to do so regardless, almost, of income or
occupation. Clearly, Americans had changed their perception of
their own social position. But what did the change mean? One
advertising executive, William Benton (later senator from
Connecticut), went out and asked people what the words “middle
class” meant to them. The results were unambiguous: “middle
class” in contrast to “working class” means believing in the ability
of one’s children to rise through performance in school. Benton
thereupon bought up the Encyclopedia Britannica company and
started peddling the Encyclopedia, mostly through high school
teachers, to parents whose children were the first generation in the
family to attend high school. “If you want to be “middle-class,” the