Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Journal

This research project examines the history of women’s involvement in internships. It looks at how women used internships to break into higher paying non-traditionally feminine employment while alsodiscussing the problems that interns encountered with sexual harassment.This project explores the rhetoric that allowed for interns to be unpaid and unprotected against discrimination throughout the 20th century. Through examining the rhetoric surroundinginternships in the 20th century, this paper found that the framing of interns as students, rather than as workers, caused interns to be excluded from employee status and left them without legal protectionfrom sexual harassment.