What are some other job titles for administrative assistant?

How do the job titles Administrative Secretary and Administrative Assistant differ?

• Answer:

  There is no difference, in either pay or responsibility. During the 1970s, when the feminist movement was just starting to gather momentum, one of the ideas being attacked was the concept of the office secretary as a minimum-wage female gofer or Gal Friday for the higher-paid, always-male executive. To escape that stigma, the political correctness movement of the 1980s rebranded the position of secretary as that of administrative assistant ; the idea was to redefine the expected duties (no more, "Go make me coffee!"), attract more men to the position, and redefine the pay scale more equitably based on how much work assistants actually do. The idea has had some success, though probably less because of the name change and more because these days management has a better understanding of how much work their assistants have taken off their shoulders.