When Dolly Parton died recently, vigor stations and euphony streamers filled our ears with her irresistible anthem, “9 to 5.” The opus topped the euphony charts and was nominated for an Oscar. It transformed Parton, making her movie debut, into a planetary crossover star. The movie, a pointed drama astir 3 women—played by Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Parton—fighting against sexism and inequality successful the workforce, was the 2nd astir fashionable movie of 1980, down lone “The Empire Strikes Back.” The real-life communicative that inspired the movie is conscionable arsenic remarkable: How a tiny radical of young women successful Boston launched a question to signifier secretaries that transformed however women are treated successful the workplace. From Parton’s powerhouse opus to the #MeToo question to the emergence of women CEOs and national leaders, Parton caught the tone of alteration that rings retired contiguous arsenic loudly arsenic it did astir 5 decades ago.
Karen Nussbaum sat successful the backmost of a darkened movie theatre connected a wintertime time 1980, watching arsenic women successful the assemblage whooped cheered astatine the movie up connected the screen—her movie. She swayed the bushed arsenic pictures flashed by of women successful skirts and carrying java cups and newspapers, looking harried and determined, speeding on metropolis streets to the infectious bushed of Dolly Parton’s song…no, Dolly Parton’s anthem:
Workin’ 9 to five, what a mode to marque a livin’
Barely gettin’ by, it’s each takin’ and nary givin’
Over the adjacent ninety minutes, the drama unfolded. Tired of being summoned to fetch java oregon take a acquisition for the boss’s wife, 3 bureau workers—played by Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton—humiliated and harassed by their sexist pig of a brag (played by Dabney Coleman), stock a associated of marijuana, kidnap him, and unrecorded retired their fantasies of revenge, giving their clueless antheral chauvinist brag a sensation of his ain medicine. It was a revenge communicative for women victimized by workplace harassment. When the brag returns to the bureau vowing to nonstop them each to jail, helium is stunned to spot the women person introduced job-sharing, flexible hours, and on-site kid care. The caput of the institution ships a humiliated Coleman to a “special project” successful Brazil and makes Tomlin the caller caput of the office.
These secretaries wanted amended wage and benefits. They wanted opportunities to advance….They wanted to beryllium treated with dignity.
The women successful the theatre cheered arsenic if it were story. When Fonda struggled with a transcript machine, a pistillate up and shouted, “Push the commencement button!” For galore of the indignities up connected the surface were existent to life. For the erstwhile six years Nussbaum had led 1 of the astir palmy grassroots organizations successful the country—9to5—fighting for wages for secretaries, amended promotions, and dignity successful the Fonda, whom Nussbaum knew from their days successful the anti-war movement, was truthful impressed erstwhile she heard what 9to5 doing she decided to marque a movie, enlisting Tomlin and Parton. As the credits rolled and the movie theatre lights came up, successful the assemblage fell silent. It was arsenic if, Nussbaum thought, the men thought thing unsafe mightiness beryllium going connected here.
The movie 9 to 5 became the second- highest-grossing movie of the year, down Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Ronald Reagan—who six weeks earlier had been elected president, and who opposed unions and the Equal Rights Amendment and had denounced Fonda arsenic “Hanoi Jane” for her absorption to the Vietnam War—saw a screening with his woman and pronounced it “funny.” Nancy Reagan invited Fonda to motion an Easter ovum for the yearly White House Easter Egg Roll.
Nussbaum gathered her overgarment and stepped into the Cleveland cold. She was abbreviated and bladed with close-cropped hair. If the filmmakers had decided to formed Karen Nussbaum, she would person been the independent, wise, spunky character—Sandra Bullock successful Our Brand Is Crisis or Holly Hunter successful Broadcast News. Nussbaum was a babe boomer carnal of the 1960s. She’d grown up successful a wide location successful a blimpish Chicago suburb wherever her parent did nationalist relations for acquisition institutions and organizations. Her parent would instrumentality a young Karen with her portion handing retired lit for Democratic candidates and serving arsenic a canvass watcher during the section elections.
As absorption to the Vietnam War intensified, the joined the play soundless bid vigil successful beforehand of the nationalist library. “You know, it’s clip that women cared arsenic overmuch astir bid bash the PTA,” her parent told the section newspaper. Nussbaum’s older member became a draught resister. Nussbaum’s household became the people of hatred message from members of the section John Birch Society—postcards with crosshairs connected them addressed to Karen’s mother. At the aforesaid time, teenage Nussbaum yearned to acceptable successful school, to find the cleanable Villager marque outfit, a skirt sweater implicit a garment with a Peter Pan collar that (in those pre-hippie days) was sweeping suburban precocious schools. There weren’t galore outlets successful the Chicago suburbs for a young middle-class miss who wanted to combat for societal justice.
Nussbaum couldn’t hold to permission location and get to college. She was accepted astatine the University of Chicago. The summertime earlier she started, she got a occupation arsenic a “gofer” astatine the 1968 Democratic Convention. Seeing demonstrators stitchery outside, Nussbaum near the normal and joined the protesters, the aerial inactive filled with teardrop gas. Nussbaum joined the chants: “The full satellite is watching.” For Nussbaum, it felt similar the full satellite was blowing apart.
Soon aft starting college, Nussbaum joined students who took implicit the University of Chicago medication building. Her authorities veered progressively left. The adjacent fall, she dropped retired of assemblage and went connected a “solidarity” travel to Cuba promoted by the Black Panthers. She attended the 1980 May Day rally astatine Yale to protestation the imprisonment of Black Panthers Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins. She joined a travel to Hanoi to protestation the Vietnam war.
Through it all, Nussbaum chafed astatine the circumscribed relation of women. Even arsenic a young extremist she saw however the boys, and past the men, dominated meetings, and however galore women became obsessed with the tangled romanticist relationships wrong extremist movements. In precocious school, Nussbaum had tally for pupil assembly president due to the fact that radical said a miss couldn’t bash it. She lost.
By 1973, astatine twenty-three and with a thickening FBI file, Nussbaum landed successful Boston. She moved into a ramshackle location with different women and organized women’s self-defense courses. To enactment herself, she took a occupation arsenic a clerk typist astatine Harvard. Nussbaum was paid 2 dollars an hr moving arsenic a “casual” worker with nary benefits. The day-to-day indignity grated connected her, particularly due to the fact that she was smart, educated, and worldly. One clip a pupil came into the office, looked astatine Nussbaum, and asked, “Isn’t anybody here?” When she walking done the halls of Harvard, staggering nether a dense load of loose-leaf notebooks, a antheral brag walked by and asked, “Why aren’t you smiling, dear?”
Nussbaum had encouraged her champion friend, Ellen Cassedy, whom she had met astatine college, to determination to Boston and instrumentality a secretarial occupation astatine Harvard. Cassedy excessively had grown up successful the suburbs and studied astatine the University of Chicago, aboriginal getting a past grade astatine Berkeley. One time a Harvard doctrine prof told her to travel to his flat to transcribe a sheaf of handwritten notes—a elaborate relationship of each the stroke jobs he’d ever received. He past took disconnected his garment and stood earlier her, bare-chested. Frightened and unsure what to do, she kept typing. After enactment and implicit breaks for coffee, different secretaries told comparable stories. One related however she’d paused portion typing a letter. Her brag asked what she was doing. “I’m thinking,” she replied. “Get backmost to work, you’re not paid to think,” the brag responded. For Nussbaum and Cassedy, their Harvard jobs were a mode station, a gig to wage the rent and enactment their activism. For their coworkers, it was their life. “We volition beryllium called girls until the time we discontinue without a pension,” 1 lamented to Nussbaum.
Beyond the Harvard secretarial pool, the 1970s were intoxicating clip of advances for women. In 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the Higher Education Act, which prohibited favoritism based connected enactment successful immoderate acquisition programme receiving funds, forcing all-male schools to unfastened their doors to women diversion programs to sponsor and concern pistillate sports. The Supreme Court issued a cascade of decisions expanding women’s rights. In 1973, the tribunal legalized termination with the Roe vs. Wade decision. It outlawed abstracted help- wanted advertisements for men and for women. The adjacent year, women won adjacent close to recognition cards and mortgages. In 1975, Billie Jean defeated Bobby Riggs successful the wide touted tennis “Battle of the Sexes” arsenic much than 50 cardinal radical watched connected television. Ms. magazine published its archetypal contented successful 1972, with Wonder Woman connected the cover.
Supported by some large governmental parties, and Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, the Equal Rights Amendment was sent to the states for ratification. By the extremity of the 1970s, a 4th of aesculapian schoolhouse students and a 3rd of instrumentality schoolhouse students were female, up from conscionable 10 percent successful 1970. One of the astir fashionable TV shows—and the victor of the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series 3 years running—was The Mary Tyler Moore Show, featuring a azygous pistillate successful her thirties moving for a TV station. Time magazine devoted its yearly 1975 Man of the Year contented to Women of the Year. “Across the wide scope of American life, from suburban tract houses to authorities legislatures, from religion pulpits to Army barracks, women’s lives are profoundly changing, and with them, the accepted relationships betwixt the sexes,” the mag declared. “1975 was not truthful overmuch the Year of the Woman arsenic the Year of the Women—an immense assortment of women altering their lives, entering caller fields, functioning with a caller consciousness of identity, integrity, and confidence….The content that women are entitled to genuinely adjacent societal and nonrecreational rights has dispersed acold and heavy into the country.”
There would beryllium nary speech of women’s liberation oregon feminism. They would not beryllium protesters years agone trying to halt a warfare oregon topple a government. They would beryllium organizers trying to physique a question from the crushed up.
The 1 radical near retired of this transformation, Nussbaum believed, were working-class women. For the clip ever, much than fractional of women had jobs extracurricular of the home. In offices, wherever 1 successful 3 women present worked, women’s was little than 60 percent of men’s—a bigger spread than successful the 1950s. Men successful clerical jobs were paid $5,000 a twelvemonth much than women. Sexism was rampant. An advertisement placed by a Cleveland employment bureau sought a “Secretary: a raven-haired dynamo!” arsenic an “Engineering secretary: blonde-haired, blue-eyed and charismatic!” Unlike middle-class achromatic women similar Nussbaum, women moving successful offices hadn’t been portion of the women’s liberation question of the 1960s. They hadn’t protested astatine the Miss America contention successful Atlantic City successful 1968. They weren’t progressive successful the ongoing run for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. “I’m nary women’s libber,” 1 caput told Nussbaum. “But I judge women should beryllium treated arsenic connected the job.” These secretaries wanted amended wage and benefits. They wanted opportunities to advance. They were bushed of grooming men who past precocious successful their companies, leaving women employees behind. They wanted to beryllium treated with dignity.
Walking done Harvard Square 1 afternoon, Nussbaum saw a picket enactment extracurricular a diner wherever she sometimes ate. Eight waitresses had declared a onslaught to request higher wages. The women’s assemblage had signed up to picket successful enactment of the waitresses, and Nussbaum took picket work Wednesday nights from 6:00 to 8:00. As she walked astir successful circles, she began to deliberation astir the women’s question and astir the women she was moving with—secretaries and different clerical workers. Nussbaum contacted 10 of her friends, each of whom were moving successful clerical jobs astir Boston. They began gathering erstwhile a week successful a “consciousness- raising group”—typical for the aboriginal 1970s—and talking astir however they got to they were, what their values were, and whether they wanted signifier a radical to effort to alteration things.
After a year’s discussion, Nussbaum’s radical decided to signifier an organization. They called it 9to5. The 1960s organizations that Nussbaum had joined, with wide protests, all-night meetings, and a just magnitude of toxic masculinity, this would beryllium different: activism tally by moving women. Meetings would person a purpose. The benignant would beryllium succinct, friendly, respectful. There would beryllium nary speech of women’s liberation oregon feminism. They would not beryllium protesters years agone trying to halt a warfare oregon topple a government. They would beryllium organizers trying to physique a question from the crushed up.
Nussbaum and her colleagues began passing retired leaflets astatine Boston subway and autobus stops to women heading to their jobs astatine downtown bureau buildings. They published a newsletter with stories—some wry, immoderate shocking—of however women were being treated. They started getting letters back. Nussbaum advertised a gathering successful the paper for November 1973 astatine the downtown Boston YWCA. More than 150 women came. None of them knew 1 another. Forming a national of women hadn’t occurred to them arsenic an option—that was thing for men moving operation oregon successful factories. They didn’t place with the rhetoric of the women’s movement. Nussbaum decided to enactment distant from words similar “feminism” and ore connected shared concerns astir debased wage and deficiency of respect connected the job. “Don’t fto your words beryllium the force of your ideas,” she told colleagues. Then they deed the streets to organize.
____________________________
From When America Roared: How the 1980s Saved, Then Broke, the Country–and Led Us to Today by Jonathan Kaufman, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Jonathan Kaufman.
English (US) ·