Gender and Advertising

[Don't Make the Same Mistake I Made]. *Evening star.* (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, September 12, 1932, Page B-11, Image 27.

Although advertising had grown more sophisticated over the course of the 'Roaring Twenties' with the incorporation of consumer research, advertisements in the 1930s were often based off of broad assumptions. Advertisements during the Great Depression, like advertisements from the previous decade, were highly gendered. The imagined female American consumer was a white, middle-class housewife who was both the "family purchasing agent" and easily manipulated.¹ Women and girls were fickle, extravagant and irrational consumers compared with the depiction of "boy consumers" who were demanding and industrious.²

"The proper study of mankind is man ... but the proper study of markets is woman."³

Women were responsible for 75-85% of consumer spending in the 1930s.⁴ However, there were not many women in the advertising industry during this time period. The first female run advertising agency, M.C. Weil Agency, was founded in 1880 by Mathilde C. Weil,⁵ but by 1930, men still outnumbered women as advertising agents nearly 8-to-1.⁶ When women were hired, it was often related to accounts in beauty and household products. Women's advertising clubs, such as the Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women, monitored employment laws and sought to expand employment opportunities for women in advertising. They were formed in reaction to women excluded from the male dominated ad agencies.⁷ Christine Frederick founded the League of Advertising Women of New York, and went on to write Selling Mrs. Consumer. Although she herself worked in with the advertising industry as an expert on the needs and wants of the American housewife, Frederick believed women belonged in the home and supported consumerism related to domestic efficiency.⁸

The following are sources related to gender representation in advertisements, advertising to women and men as consumers, and women working in the advertising industry.

These historical items discuss gender in advertising and are primary sources published shortly before or during the Great Depression. These are historical sources related to gender in advertising. The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Selling Mrs. Consumer by Frederick, Christine
Call Number: TX326 .F7
Published/Created: 1929
An influential book from the efficiency expert Mrs. Christine Frederick about advertising to women consumers with contradictory messages about women as rational consumers and creatures of instinct. A digitized transcript of the book, along with images of the original pages, is available through the Library of Congress.
Careers for Women in Journalism: A Personnel Study of 881 Women Experienced as Salaried Writers in Journalism, Advertising, Publicity, and Promotion by Iona Robertson Logie
Call Number: PN4784.W7 L6 1938
Published/Created: 1938
Results and discussion of a survey on women in journalism, which covers both their current jobs and their job history. Of particular interest is Chapter 4: Jobs in Advertising, Publicity and Promotion, and a section on advertising within Chapter 5: Earnings of Salaried Women Writers. This title is available online through Hathi Trust.
Advertising to Women by Carl Naether
Call Number: HF5827 .N3
Published/Created: 1928

A number of magazines that were published during the Great Depression provide insight into advertising to women and men, both in articles about consumerism and in their advertisements. Below are just a sample of magazines from that time period. The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Women's Wear Daily
Call Number: HD9940.U3 W4
Published/Created: 1927-present
A trade publication (as opposed to a popular magazine for a mass audience) that focused on women's fashion and clothing industry. Later the publication also included men's clothing industry news and trends. Available online from several databases to onsite patrons and other subscribers, specifically the Women's Wear Daily Archive subscription database.
Good Housekeeping
Call Number: TX1 .G7
Published/Created: 1916-present
Contains articles and advice for a female audience, originally geared towards housewives. Full text available online through HathiTrust. External
American Boy
Call Number: AP201 .A5
Published/Created: 1899-1941
A magazine covering topics of interest to male adolescents.
Esquire
Call Number: AP2 .E845
Published/Created: 1933-present
A magazine aimed at the interests and tastes of upper middle class men.

These are books published more recently about gender in advertising during the 1930s. The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Ad Women by Juliann Sivulka
Call Number: HF5813 .U6 S54 2009
ISBN: 9781591026723
Published/Created: 2009
"Most of the workers in advertising, the media, retail, and fashion are women. Holding key marketing and advertising positions, women shape the basic promotional appeal of almost every consumer product in America. How did the advertising business go from a handful of women in a man's world to women working in virtually every mass consumer goods industry in America in the space of the twentieth century? Ad Women tells the story of how women have risen to the top of the advertising profession." —From publisher’s description.
Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century by Tracey Deutsch
Call Number: HF5469.23.U62 D48 2010
ISBN: 9780807833278
Published/Created: 2010
"In her examination of the history of food distribution in the United States, Deutsch demonstrates the important roles that gender, business, class, and the state played in the evolution of American grocery stores. [...] Demonstrating connections between women's work and the history of capitalism, Deutsch locates the origins of supermarkets in the politics of twentieth-century consumption" —From publisher’s description.

Of special interest are the Introduction, Chapter 1: "Women and the Social Politics of Food Procurement," Chapter 2: "Small Stores, Big Business: The RIse of Chain Store Groceries, 1914-1933," Chapter 3: "The Changing Politics of Mass Consumption, 1910-1940," Chapter 4: "Moments of Rebellion: The Consumer Movement and Consumer Cooperatives, 1930-1950," and Chapter 5: "Grocery Stores Trade Up: The Politics of Supermarkets and the Making of a Mass Market, 1930-1945."
The Commodification of Childhood: The Children's Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer by Daniel Thomas Cook
Call Number: HQ792.U5 C673 2004
ISBN: 0822332795
Published/Created: 2004
This book "explores the roots of children's consumer culture--and the commodification of childhood itself--by looking at the rise, growth, and segmentation of the children's clothing industry" from 1917 through the early 1960s, and describes how children came to be seen as a distinct consumer group.

Of special interest are the Introduction, Chapter 2: "Merchandising, Motherhood, and Morality: Industry Origins and Child Welfare, 1917-1929" which describes how housewives became seen as purchasing agents, Chapter 3: "Pediocularity: From the Child's Point of View," about department stores beginning to advertise to children and not their parents, and Chapter 4: "Reconfiguring Girlhood: Age Grading, Size Ranges, and Aspirational Merchandising in the 1930s."
Food Is Love: Food Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America by Katherine J. Parkin
Call Number: HF5827.85 .P37 2006
ISBN: 0812239296
Published/Created: 2006
Using advertisements from popular magazines, this book argues that advertisers have "historically promoted food in distinctly gendered terms, returning repeatedly to themes that associated shopping and cooking with women. Foremost among them was that, regardless of the actual work involved, women should serve food to demonstrate love for their families. In identifying shopping and cooking as an expression of love, ads helped to both establish and reinforce the belief that kitchen work was women's work, even as women's participation in the labor force dramatically increased. Alternately flattering her skills as a homemaker and preying on her insecurities, advertisers suggested that using their products would give a woman irresistible sexual allure, a happy marriage, and healthy children. Ads also promised that by buying and making the right foods, a woman could help her family achieve social status, maintain its racial or ethnic identity, and assimilate into the American mainstream. Advertisers clung tenaciously to this paradigm throughout great upheavals in the patterns of American work, diet, and gender roles" —From publisher’s description.
Selling Mrs. Consumer: Christine Frederick and the rise of household efficiency by Rutherford, Janice Williams
Call Number: TX140.F74 R88 2003
ISBN: 0820324493
Published/Created: 2003
"Contrary to her professional role as home efficiency expert, advertising consultant, and consumer advocate, Christine Frederick espoused the nineteenth-century ideal of preserving the virtuous home--and a woman's place in it. In an effort to reconcile her desire to succeed in the public sphere of modernization and consumerism with the knowledge that most middle-class Americans still held traditional beliefs about gender roles, Frederick fashioned a career for herself that encouraged other women to remain at home. With the rise of home economics and scientific management, Frederick--college-educated but confined to the drudgery of housework--devised a plan for bringing the public sphere into the domestic. [...] Determined to train women to become proficient homemakers and efficient managers, Frederick secured a job writing articles for the Ladies' Home Journal. A professional career as home efficiency expert later expanded to include advertising consultant and consumer advocate. Frederick assured male advertisers that she knew women well and promised to help them sell to "Mrs. Consumer." —From publisher’s description.

Of special interest are Chapter 9: "Reframing women's role in the twenties," Chapter 10: "Becoming Mrs. Consumer," and Chapter 12: "Selling out Mrs. Consumer."
Selling Women's History by Emily Westkaemper
Call Number: HQ1410 .W47 2017
ISBN: 9780813576336
Published/Created: 2017
"Selling Women's History reveals how, from the 1900s to the 1970s, popular culture helped teach Americans about the accomplishments of their foremothers, promoting an awareness of women's wide-ranging capabilities. On one hand, Emily Westkaemper examines how this was a marketing ploy, as Madison Avenue co-opted women's history to sell everything from Betsy Ross Red lipstick to Virginia Slims cigarettes. But she also shows how pioneering adwomen and female historians used consumer culture to publicize histories that were ignored elsewhere. Their feminist work challenged sexist assumptions about women's subordinate roles. Assessing a dazzling array of media, including soap operas, advertisements, films, magazines, calendars, and greeting cards, Selling Women's History offers a new perspective on how early- and mid-twentieth-century women saw themselves. Rather than presuming a drought of female agency between the first and second waves of American feminism, it reveals the subtle messages about women's empowerment that flooded the marketplace." —From publisher’s description.

These are articles published more recently (at least decades after the Great Depression) about gender in advertising during the 1930s. The following articles are linked to their location on their journal's homepage or other stable URL. At times, a subscription may be required to access the full text of the article. When available, a link is provided to the journal's Library of Congress catalog record and/or subscription where the article can be found.

Breazeale, Kenon. "In Spite of Women: "Esquire" Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer." External
Full citation: Breazeale, Kenon. "In Spite of Women: "Esquire" Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer." Signs 20, no. 1 (Autumn 1994): 1-22.
This article argues that the Great Depression provided the incentive for corporate America to retool its advertisements towards men, marketing an image-conscious masculinity that was intended to encourage reluctant consumers to spend more. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External
Clifford, Marie. "Working with Fashion: The Role of Art, Taste, and Consumerism in Women's Professional Culture, 1920-1940." External
Full citation: Clifford, Marie. "Working with Fashion: The Role of Art, Taste, and Consumerism in Women's Professional Culture, 1920-1940." American Studies 44, no. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 59-84.
This article concerns women working in fashion between 1920 and 1940, with a focus on how ideas about modernity, "good taste," and expectations about women's behavior in the workplace were manifested in business decisions in the fashion industry and reflected by popular consumer marketing. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External.
Graham, Laurel. "Beyond Manipulation: Lillian Gilbreth's Industrial Psychology and the Governmentality of Women Consumers." External
Full citation: Graham, Laurel. "Beyond Manipulation: Lillian Gilbreth's Industrial Psychology and the Governmentality of Women Consumers." The Sociological Quarterly 38, No. 4 (Autumn 1997): 539-565.
This article discusses the psychology of advertising aimed at women in the first third of twentieth century, with a focus on the interplay between consumer marketing and the emerging fields of industrial psychology, scientific management, and home economics. It examines the influence of women like Lillian Gilbreth, an industrial engineer, and Christine Frederick, a home economist, advertiser, and proponent of planned obsolescence with an interest in scientific management. Graham argues that there were dueling perceptions of women as rational "family purchasing agents" who organized the household according to the principles of "household engineering" and made the majority of household purchases, and women as easily manipulated consumers who are "unaware of what they really want" and thus highly susceptible to advertising. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External.
Jacobson, Lisa. "Manly Boys and Enterprising Dreamers: Business Ideology and the Construction of the Boy Consumer, 1910-1930." External
Full citation: Jacobson, Lisa. "Manly Boys and Enterprising Dreamers: Business Ideology and the Construction of the Boy Consumer, 1910-1930." Enterprise & Society 2, No. 2 (June 2001): 225-258.
"Early twentieth-century advertising discourses on the archetypal boy consumer promoted a masculinized ideal of consumption that broke decisively from the stereotype of the emotion-driven female shopper. Boys were lauded as rational, informed buyers who prized technological innovation and influenced parents and peers" (from article abstract). This article uses advertisements as well as trade publications like Printers' Ink to track the construction of the industrious, innovative boy-consumer. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External.
Lavin, Marilyn. “Creating Consumers in the 1930s: Irna Phillips and the Radio Soap Opera.” External
Full citation: Lavin, Marilyn. “Creating Consumers in the 1930s: Irna Phillips and the Radio Soap Opera.” Journal of Consumer Research 22, no. 1 (June 1995): 75-89.
Lavin analyzes Irna Phillip’s serialized radio soap operas. Phillip incorporated brand placement into her storylines and used the characters as “effective product spokespersons.” The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print.
MacLennan, Anne F. "Women, Radio Broadcasting and the Depression: A "Captive" Audience from Household Hints to Story Time and Serial." External
Full citation: MacLennan, Anne F. "Women, Radio Broadcasting and the Depression: A "Captive" Audience from Household Hints to Story Time and Serial." Women's Studies 37, no. 6 (2008): 616-633.
This article examines serial dramas and different types of listening practices in the 1930s, active "family listening" in evenings and more passive listening while the listener was completing other tasks. MacLennan discusses the scheduling of serial dramas aimed at women and children's programming throughout the day. Includes a comparison between American and Canadian, and East and West Coast programming. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print.
Nickles, Shelley. ""Preserving Women": Refrigerator Design as Social Process in the 1930s." External
Full citation: Nickles, Shelley. ""Preserving Women": Refrigerator Design as Social Process in the 1930s." Technology and Culture 43, no. 4 "Kitchen Technologies" (Oct. 2002): 693-727.
This article analyzes how refrigerators were rebranded, going from luxury goods, to a "household necessity" over the course of the 1920s and '30s. Nickles discusses this from a design perspective, but also discusses consumer advertising's role in reframing refrigerators and constructing an imagined middle-class housewife as the primary consumer. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External.
Pendergast, Tom. ""Horatio Alger Doesn't Work Here Any More": Masculinity and American Magazines, 1919-1940." External
Full citation: Pendergast, Tom. ""Horatio Alger Doesn't Work Here Any More": Masculinity and American Magazines, 1919-1940." American Studies 38, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 55-80.
This article discusses how magazines articulated masculinity between 1919 and 1940. Pendergast argues that there was a major shift between the "Victorian masculinity" of the early 1920s to the "Modern" vision of masculinity represented in American magazines a decade later, which was consumption-oriented. In publications like American Magazine and Vanity Fair, Modern masculinity was dependent on self-presentation and could be enhanced by the latest fashions, an attitude that meshed neatly with the emerging consumer culture. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print.
Sarch, Amy. “Those dirty ads! Birth control advertising in the 1920s and 1930s.” External
Full citation: Sarch, Amy. “Those dirty ads! Birth control advertising in the 1920s and 1930s.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14, no. 1 (1997): 31-48.
This article examines the language used in birth control advertising in the 1920s and ‘30s, which was intended to “construct birth control as scientific.” Sach compares ads aimed at doctors with ads published in women's magazines. Available with subcription through EBSCOhost Communication & Mass Media Complete or or in print from the Library of Congress catalog.
Swiencicki, Mark A. "Consuming Brotherhood: Men's Culture, Style and Recreation as Consumer Culture, 1880-1930." External
Full citation: Swiencicki, Mark A. "Consuming Brotherhood: Men's Culture, Style and Recreation as Consumer Culture, 1880-1930." Journal of Social History 31, no. 4 (Summer 1998): 773-808.
This article argues that despite perceptions at the time and in the historiography, men were engaged consumers and specifically targeted by magazine advertising from the 1880s up to the beginning of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External.
Templin, Mary. "Revolutionary Girl, Militant Housewife, Antifascist Mother, and More." External
Full citation: Templin, Mary. "Revolutionary Girl, Militant Housewife, Antifascist Mother, and More: The Representation of Women in American Communist Women's Journals of the 1930s." The Centennial Review 41, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 625-633.
This article explores visions of femininity in communist women's magazines of the 1930s. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print.
Tone, Andrea. "Contraceptive Consumers: Gender and the Political Economy of Birth Control in the 1930s." External
Full citation: Tone, Andrea. "Contraceptive Consumers: Gender and the Political Economy of Birth Control in the 1930s." Journal of Social History 29, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 485-506.
This article examines the history of contraception advertising in the 1930s, which used appeals to scientific authority and scare tactics that tried to play off of the concerns of an imagined female consumer. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External.
Veri, Maria J. "Got Athletes? The Use of Male Athlete Celebrity Endorsers in Early Twentieth-Century Dairy-Industry Promotions." External
Full citation: Veri, Maria J. "Got Athletes? The Use of Male Athlete Celebrity Endorsers in Early Twentieth-Century Dairy-Industry Promotions." Journal of Sport History 43, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 290-305.
This article discusses the use of male athletes as celebrity endorsers in milk advertisements from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1940s. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External.
Zanoni, Elizabeth. ""Per Voi, Signore": Gendered Representations of Fashion, Food, and Fascism in Il Progresso Italo-Americano during the 1930s." External
Full citation: Zanoni, Elizabeth. ""Per Voi, Signore": Gendered Representations of Fashion, Food, and Fascism in Il Progresso Italo-Americano during the 1930s." Journal of American Ethnic History 31, no. 3 (Spring 2012): 33-71.
This article describes the advertising and "women's pages" of the Italian-language publication Il Progresso that was partially funded by the fascist Italian government and aimed at Italian-Americans during the 1930s. Although it encouraged its readership to build affective ties to "la Patria," its columns and advertisements were specifically tailored to the expectations of its American audience. The Library of Congress catalog lists the record for this journal title in print. The article is also available via subscription on JSTOR External.

Notes

Marilyn Lavin, “Creating Consumers in the 1930s: Irna Phillips and the Radio Soap Opera.” Journal of Consumer Research 22, no. 1 (June 1995): 75-89; Laurel Graham, "Beyond Manipulation: Lillian Gilbreth's Industrial Psychology and the Governmentality of Women Consumers." The Sociological Quarterly 38, No. 4 (Autumn 1997): 539-565. Back to text
Lisa Jacobson, "Manly Boys and Enterprising Dreamers: Business Ideology and the Construction of the Boy Consumer, 1910-1930." Enterprise & Society 2, no. 2 (June 2001): 225-258. Back to text
Printers Ink, (Nov. 7, 1929): 133 Back to text
"Says Women Buy 75% of all Goods Sold: Vaughn Flannery Cites Buying Power as Indicating Feminine Taste must be Considered in Styling of all Merchandise," Women’s Wear Daily, 40, no. 74, (Apr 15, 1930): 24. Back to text
Juliann Sivulka, Ad Women: How They Impact What We Need, Want, and Buy, (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009): 25-26 Back to text
Iona Robertson Logie, Careers for Women in Journalism (Scranton, PA: International Textbook Company, 1938): 51. Back to text
Emily Westkaemper, Selling Women's History: Packaging Feminism in Twentieth-Century American Popular Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017). Back to text
Janice Williams Rutherford, Selling Mrs. Consumer : Christine Frederick and the Rise of Household Efficiency, (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003). Back to text

Consumer Advertising During the Great Depression: A Resource Guide

Gender and Advertising

Notes