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This paper critically re-examines the clerical proletarianization thesis from the perspective of the feminization of the early-twentieth-century Canadian office. The paper argues that the segmentation of the office work force along gender lines explains many of the changes in wages and working conditions erroneously interpreted by the proletarianization thesis as signs of the clerks' declining class position. More specifically, the expansion and rationalization of the office during the "administrative revolution," roughly from 1900 to 1930, depressed clerical earnings through the recruitment of cheap female labour into new routine jobs. Male clerks, while not significantly better off economically than skilled manual workers, moved up into the expanding ranks of management. Even within the female clerical sector there is little evidence of sweeping work degradation, given considerable variation in work and market conditions across industries, within and among firms, and among clerical tasks.