Historical Fiction Pet Peeves: Secretaries

This is something that comes up a lot in Goblin Emperor fiction, so it's not just historical fiction, but my complaint is based on real-life history, so we'll fit it into this series of posts.

In the modern era, secretaries are seen as a very low-level, bottom-rank job, with no prestige, which is why they're changing the name to "administrative assistant." But this is a modern phenomena and is the result of the job being devalued when women entered it. Prior to the flood of female secretaries in the early 20th Century, a secretary was a very prestigious job.

Here's the thing: until the mid-19th-Century, the amount of literacy needed to become a secretary was pretty rare. Literacy and numeracy varied wildly in different times and places, but to be a secretary you don't just need to know your letters and your numbers and be able to sign your name and do basic things like that. A secretary has to be able to read and write fluently--often in multiple languages. They're the ones keeping the written records; they're the ones writing letters and handling their employer's correspondence; they're the ones who have to be able to take the information in the records and letters and summarize it for their employer's convenience. It was not unusual for the secretary to be better educated than their employer was!

( And not only are they highly skilled, they also have a lot of de-facto power. )