"Managing Up" -- I wish it were an artifact of past times. Since the 1950's, administrative support was one of the few corporate careers open to women, and that support position always involved acting as a sort of domestic surrogate, offering administrative but also emotional support (in the form of warm subservience) to a more powerful male. It was also expected that unmarried administrative assistants were in the field looking for a nice boss to marry. Even recently women are expected to act out traditional femininity in the workplace, more or less depending upon their field.