Maid of All Work or Departmental Sister-in-Law? The Faculty Wife Employed on Campus

Three propositions issue from an analysis of protracted personal experience in the editorial office of the American Journal of Sociology: (1) a possible effect of employing a faculty wife in a position on campus where her superiors include her husband's colleagues may be a downward transfer of responsibility, initiated by them or by herself; (2) with such a change in relationships a job which had been defined as temporary and amateur may become permanent and professionalized; (3) the change may manifest itself in standards and working practices and in the quality of the product.