What's up Chicago?

I'm Erin Allen, and this is Curious City.

When you think of an FBI agent, odds are, is the very serious-looking folks in a crime drama,

showing up to a murder scene in a suit, kind of like this guy from a TV show that reenacts crime cases, the FBI files.

It was, as the saying goes, round up the usual suspects, and that's exactly who we started to look at.

Usually, it's a man, but these days, it could really be anybody capable of doing a job.

That clip is from the Dick Wolf TNT series

that's simply called FBI.

For decades, the FBI was a man's world

and anybody else was just living in it,

including the administrative staff.

Last episode, we learned how the Bureau used to recruit high school girls as secretaries and stenographers,

which is still just unbelievable.

Today, we're going to talk about what it was like as a young woman working for the FBI

and the ebbs and flows of their access to leadership and autonomy within the Bureau.

My name is Jane McCarty.

I live in Western Springs.

Jane ended up in the Chicago area, but she says initially she was recruited by the FBI in California in 1968 during one of her high school business classes.

At least five girls from my high school went to work for the FBI.

You had to sign a paper and say, I'll work for a year, and some of us stayed for 44, and some left after a year.

Jane was the type to stay for 44. She and other girls she was recruited with were hired as

stenographers and typists. And young women working for the bureau gleaned a certain level of freedom.

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