It's a man's world (?)

I recently discovered some sexist commercials from 1950s and I was really intrigued when I saw them. I know that the inequality between women and men represents still a subject of concern in our society, but this is nothing compared to the last decades. As you can observe, the ads below are trully insulting for women.

60 years ago, sentences like "Keep her where she belongs" or "Show her it’s a man's world" would not have aroused the slightest trace of indignation or revolt. So no one would even raise an eyebrow when companies promoted their products as being so simple to use that "even a woman can do it" or extremely useful, which ‘’do everything but cooking – that’s what wives are for’’.

Whether they admit or not, the advertisers from the ‘60s contributed greatly to perpetuate the stereotypes about women. They were  trying to sell products to men that promised to put women "in their place", sometimes stating clearly and simply that "men are better than women", while in the case of women, they were selling  products that would convince men to stay with them.

However, the advertisers have been those who, realizing the importance of this category of consumers, quickly reevaluated their communication strategies.  Eventually, David Ogilvy, ‘’the father of advertising" was the one who said "The consumer is not an idiot, the consumer is your wife." Nowadays, the inequality between genders in the advertising field (and of course, in other fields of activity) is not that visible like in the past, but we cannot deny that it still exists.

Andra Androniciuc