By Karen Sternheimer

The recent passing of the legendary Dolly Parton has brought many tributes, highlighting her remarkable career and how she navigated the country music scene so deftly over six decades. She was a walking contradiction in many ways, proudly featuring an enhanced bust, big blonde wigs, and ample makeup, while being a shrewd businesswoman who wrote many songs about women standing up for themselves.

When Parton became a superstar in the 1970s, it was common for her large chest to be the butt of jokes and an open subject for interviewers. It would be shocking now to objectify someone to this degree today, particularly someone with so many noteworthy talents. Her name became synonymous with her chest. She leaned into it, making jokes about it herself.

As a child in the 1970s and 1980s who wasn’t familiar with country music, I knew her only as the subject of these jokes. That is, until I saw the movie 9 to 5 (1980). The movie stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, who along with Parton fight back against women’s marginalization in their office. Parton’s character was thought to be having an affair with the boss and thus was not initially seen as sympathetic to the cause. But as this scene reveals, she had been sexually harassed, something she—and many women—might have put up with in order to keep a job in an unsympathetic work environment:

I saw this movie in the theater as a child, and it made a big impression on me. I knew very little about gender and the workplace as a kid, and was growing up in an era where my intelligence was valued by my family and at school. It hadn’t occurred to me then that I might face any limits in a future career because I was female. My parents had purchased and played the 1970s album “Free to Be You and Me”—a star-studded feel-good project that challenged gender-based stereotypes. Someone also bought me the related workbook when I was old enough to read.

In the feel-good haze of my supportive environment, I hadn’t yet realized that women experienced blatant workplace discrimination on the job. 9 to 5 changed that.

From the movie, I learned that Dolly Parton was much more than those obsessed with her anatomy would have us believe. Perhaps, like her character Doralee, Parton presented herself to the world in a way that got the attention she needed to succeed. Like Parton, there was much more to Doralee than met the eye. Just like her less glamorous co-workers—Fonda downplayed her looks as a shy bespeckled newcomer Judy—Doralee wanted her workplace conditions to improve. And rather than turn against one another, they found common cause against their boss and started a movement.

The movie was a fictionalized—and funny—account of a real-life movement that started in Boston during the 1970s, also called 9to5. As this documentary details, women’s opportunities were often limited to secretarial work, and they were seen as ancillaries to senior male colleagues rather than as coworkers. These workers organized, and raised awareness to make changes we take for granted today, including protection from sexual harassment, ending gender-based job ads, and working towards equal pay.

Source: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2026/demo/p60-289/figure6.pdf

As you can see from the graph above, in 1980 women earned about 60 cents for every dollar men  earned. In 2025 that had risen to nearly 84 cents on the dollar.

When I started graduate school decades after this movement, I worked as an office receptionist. While many people knew I was a graduate student, to most people in the office, I was a “girl,” a young female there to provide support for their important endeavors. I was asked once to make coffee for an older male executive, but the joke was on him: I don’t drink coffee and had no idea how to make it. I’m sure it was terrible, but that’s what happens when you ask someone to do something that isn’t their job.

Unlike in the 9to5 documentary or movie, there were female executives where I worked, and they treated me with respect. But they still occasionally asked me to do things that were not part of my job description, like take their lunch orders and tell their spouses they were in the office when they weren’t.

Later, while still a graduate student working on my dissertation, I took a job in a marketing research firm. I was hired as an entry level research associate, the same position people just out of college with a bachelor’s degree would be offered. I was told this was just to be able to learn the business from the ground up and that I would move up fast.

I later learned someone else with a similar educational profile, working on their doctorate, was hired at the executive level. This person was male, and close to my age. Soon after I left the company, working for less pay as a research assistant within academia. I was fortunate that I could afford to temporarily take a pay cut in order to work in a supportive environment.

Many of us have benefitted from the struggles of the 9to5 movement, and the awareness that the movie brought to the public. Even if you aren’t female, if you were raised by someone who is, these gains likely made a difference in your life. Disparities still exist, but they won’t go away on their own. It takes activism, and sometimes art, to create change.