The United Nations is a mirror of its members.”
Former Secretary-General U Thant used to say that “the United Nations is a mirror of its members.” If that’s true, then it shouldn’t be surprising that the UN has also reflected some of the inequities of its member-states. In the Guided Tours Unit, there have been issues related to working conditions, career advancement, and gender. Guides, however, have pushed back in various ways, helping improve the UN from within.
Objectifying Guides
Sunday News, September 28, 1952
This headline from a New York newspaper indicates what the AAUN was looking for to staff the guided tours. The article itself added some more clarity: “The United Nations has sent out a chorus call for a bevy of gifted young lovelies to glamorize its plate glass headquarters.”
Since the establishment of the guided tours, guides have been selected for their communication skills, knowledge of international affairs, and multilingualism. But, in the early years, they were also hired for their looks–a common criterion for other public-facing feminine jobs, such as flight attendants, in the 1950s and 1960s. For the guides, however, the emphasis on physical beauty sometimes undercut their expertise. Despite having to represent and explain the UN to the public, the guides, according to a French guide from the 1960s, were often seen as “glorified hostesses.”
September 1, 1963 [Photo UN]
Kristina Minister [Photo Secretariat News]
Kristina Minister, an American guide from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, discusses how the guides faced and dealt with the advances of men on the job.
“Those were patriarchal times.”
October 5, 1953 [Photo UN]
The AAUN placed a lot of emphasis on grooming and personal appearance. According to its handbook on the guided tours from the early 1950s: “Each staff member receives a course in good grooming, consisting of four two-hour lectures, given by an outside expert in health and personal appearance. During the course the staff member’s appearance is studied, and, if needed, suggestions for improvement are made.”
Top headline, New York Times, August 31, 1968; bottom headline, New York Times, June 21, 1967.
Into the late 1960s, journalists covering the UN continued to focus on the guides’ appearance. This was an image that the Guided Tours Unit projected. In fact, in 1968, the Deputy Chief of the Visitors’ Service told a journalist that he and his colleagues “chose the guides on the basis of education, personality and looks, with equal weight to each factor” and that, for “esthetic reasons,” guides could only work for two years or until the age of thirty. Future guides would push back against these age restrictions.
Arthur Goldberg to U Thant, June 3, 1968 [Photo UN Archive]
Near the end of the 1960s, the physical beauty of the guides continued to be a focal point for both the UN and visitors. Although the US Ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg complimented the guides’ capacities, he also focused on their looks: “The young ladies are all extremely polite, well informed, and unusually attractive.”
Judith Steiner [Photo Judith Steiner]
Judith Steiner, a Canadian guide from the 1960s, discusses the hiring criteria that the UN used to hire guides.
“You had to know a little bit about geography and history. But it was also like applying to be Miss World.”
Jill Roberts [Photo Jill Roberts]
Jill Roberts, an Australian guide from the 1960s, discusses a UN publicity campaign that featured images of guides in ads on buses led to the guides lounge receiving strange phone calls.
“They used to have in the public buses pictures of the UN guides with their names. And then they started getting too many weird phone calls in the guides lounge so they stopped doing that.”
Towards a More Inclusive Organization
Various employment barriers have prevented different people—such as, before the 1970s, men and pregnant women—from working as guides. This section explores these barriers and the ways in which guides have fought back and made the UN a more representative organization.
Richard E. Hetherington to U Thant, November 7, 1971 [Photo UN Archives]
Maurice Liu to Richard E. Hetherington, December 6, 1971 [Photo UN Archives]
Between 1952 and 1977, men were barred from working as guides, as this correspondence between an aspiring applicant and the Chief of the Visitors’ Service in 1971 indicates. This was the same year that men in the United States, invoking the 1964 Civil Rights Act, won the right to work as flight attendants (Celio Diaz v. Pan American World Airways).
Kevin Kennedy
In 1977, the UN finally began hiring male guides–a decision that, an American guide named Kevin Kennedy from the 1970s recalls, chipped away at the gendered expectations of the job.
“For the women guides, many of them felt that it was something of a victory because they had advocated for integrating the guide service.”
By the mid-1970s, guides who became pregnant were no longer dismissed but instead placed on “alternative service.” When this happened to one of their colleagues in 1978, the guides collectively decided not to show up to work one day—a decision that pressured the UN to revise this policy.
“We didn’t call it a strike. We didn’t call it a sick-out. We just didn’t show up for work one day because we were all objecting to the fact that pregnant guides were being put on alternative service.”
Tina Baensch-Raver
Another exclusionary policy targeted pregnant women. Into at least the 1960s, the UN didn’t permit guides who became pregnant to continue working. Tina Baensch-Raver, someone who had aspirations of an international career, had to leave the job after becoming pregnant.
“Almost at the end of two years, I became pregnant. You weren’t allowed to be a guide and be pregnant so I was trying desperately to hide it... I really wanted to go onto an international job. There were very few guides who were able to get a job in the Secretariat or elsewhere in the UN.”
Breaking Down Barriers
Despite the guides’ invaluable knowledge of the UN system and their experience in public relations, there were few doors open to them after their 27-month contract ended. In the early 1980s, guides fought back against these limitations and pushed for greater recognition of their unique skill set.
Comic, Equal Time, Ad Hoc Group on Equal Rights for Women, date unknown
In the 1970s and 1980s–a period which coincided with the UN Decade for Women (1975-1985)–female UN employees challenged the sexism and gender-based inequalities that they experienced in the Organization. This culminated in the creation of the Ad Hoc Group on Equal Rights for Women, an unofficial group within the UN that advocated for women. The Ad Hoc Group also published Equal Time, from which this comic comes.
Maria Wilhelms [Photo Liisa Simola]
Before the mid-1980s, it was difficult for guides to turn their employment at the UN into something longer term, as they could not apply as internal candidates for positions at the professional level. Guides, such as Maria Wilhems, felt that this policy was not only “unfair” to the guides, but also a missed opportunity for the UN to put to use the guides’ education, training, and uniquely broad knowledge of the UN.
“We wanted to be able to transfer into the Organization. If there’s an opening somewhere, I could apply for that job. But we were not allowed to do that. We had to leave the UN and then re-enter to take the interview. And we thought that was so unfair.”
Maria Wilhelms [Photo Liisa Simola]
Maria Wilhelms, pictured here with fellow guide Eva Ahlberg, discusses how the guides’ advocacy resulted in a dramatic policy change. Guides were now able to stay on for longer than the original two years and three months that their contracts stipulated and they could apply for professional-class positions in the Secretariat.
“We achieved contracts like everyone else in the Organization. I think that was good for the Organization to keep a group of people who were so knowledgeable.”
“Swedish women on strike against the “sex job” at the UN,” Kvallposten, no date [Maria Wilhelms’ collection; translated by Anna Goransson.]
Translation: “The Swedish guides Eva Toft, Eva Ahlberg and Maria Andersson are on strike together with their colleagues against gender discrimination and for their job security at the UN in New York. They want the same job security as other UN employees.
However, the UN leadership believes that the guides should be young and sexy as well as accommodating with male UN officials. Therefore, the guides are replaced every other year.
Yesterday, the UN's 58 guides went on strike. This meant that thousands of school children and tourists were left without a guide when they came to the world organization's main building in New York
Pure chaos arose when no one took care of the many busloads of schoolchildren and tourists who came to New York and the UN building. The UN's main building has 600,000 visitors annually...”
Lena Dissin [Photo UN]
Lena Dissin, a Swedish guide from the 1970s, discusses how the training and experiences of the guides have provided the knowledge and tools for many former guides to rise through the ranks of the Secretariat. Here, Dissin, now the Chief of the Guided Tours Unit, trains an incoming cohort of guides in 1994.
“Having that foundation of working as a guide has been invaluable and very rare. As you get higher up in the UN, most people have a specialty. But very often they don’t have the breadth of knowledge that we were infused with during the training and working as a guide.”
Kevin Kennedy in Gau, Mali, 2014 [Photo UN]
Kevin Kennedy, an American guide from the 1970s, discusses how the guides’ efforts opened up pathways to careers in the UN, leading to numerous former guides working in the upper levels of the UN. Here, in 2014, Kevin Kennedy examines an unarmed drone with the Under-Secretary-General for 国产AVkeeping Operations.
“A lot of guides have gone on to do very interesting things both inside and outside the UN. At one point we did a count of the number of former guides who were in the executive office of the Secretary-General and I think the number was nine.”