After finishing high school or after reaching the allowed age for workforce entry, if needed it was possible take courses lasting several weeks, to learn how to write shorthand and typing, which advanced entry into a shorthand or writing pool secretary position; these schools or private schools offering courses in typing, for example, existed as early as the 1880s.
[5] The Gibbs schools promoted a message of female empowerment, while focusing on the type of education that would be most valuable to women at the time.
The Gibbs schools promoted the ideas that secretarial training was the path to a career for women.
To set it apart from other secretarial schools of the era, the Gibbs school was marketed as selecting only women of a high socioeconomic status, making them highly appealing to young women from elite backgrounds.
[5] Gibbs distinguished her schools from her competitors, and she did so by offering courses in dressing appropriately, serving tea, and other societal refinements.