I'm still not clear how office work has improved by me not having a secretary. The two hours a day I waste on email, meeting planning etc would pay someone a comfortable wage and mean I don't have to be bothered all the time by emails that I probably don't need to answer, unless it's from those two people.
In my current gig we have an actual full time office manager and it's fucking amazing.
That's always been the point of eliminating jobs: it frees up the people who used to do those jobs to do other things.
That's the problem of the current system, losing jobs is fine as long as they are replaced by better jobs. When they are replaced by worse jobs you have a broken system. And we have a very broken system.
She was awesome, at the first meeting she had worked out from previous years all the key things the other members of the committee needed to do - written all the letters and handed them to us to sign.
The problem is the "improvement" is a financial one for the company rather than a workflow improvement at the employee level.
PS: The best secretary I ever had was male; some of the smartest CS-folks I know are women.