Brands hired women as sales agents to exploit perceived female trustworthiness

Evidence

Of particular significance to the current study are historical exemplars of word-of-mouth advertising that coincided with cultural assumptions about the communicative nature of women. As early as the nineteenth century, advertisers and publishers sought to leverage the respectability of “regular women” for promotional purposes. For instance, women’s magazine owners and editors routinely crafted relatable, female personae to establish a sense of kinship between readers and (often fictional) magazine personnel. Brand retailers, too, believed that everyday women would lend a sense of trustworthiness to the traditionally masculine practice of hawking products. In the early twentieth century, the founder of the California Perfume Company (CPC)—which was rebranded in 1939 as the now-iconic Avon cosmetics—made the then-bold move to hire a female sales force. These “worthy and enterprising” women were seen as reputable and adept communicators—factors that distinguished them from traveling salesmen, whose reputations were often suspect. Cultural historian Kathy Peiss’s exploration of the nascent American beauty industry addresses the role of women as investors, distributors, and promoters. By the 1920s, though, men rose up the ranks to lead these cosmetics firms as they sought to “create a mass market and sell beauty products to all women.” Such histories reveal how female admittance into these fields was not politically motivated but, instead, driven by the financial exploitation of commercial femininity. — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 375

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the historical moral-panics/market article: the recruitment of women as ‘respectable’ commercial agents because salesman were suspect shows the same gender coding of commerce across eras.
• recurring: this claim recurs 3 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Advertisers co-opted feminist rhetoric to sell household products — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 219; Agentic women face backlash because agency is accepted only in men — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 756; Dressing for display makes women dependent on others’ recognition for self-worth — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1582 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-promotion violates gendered prescriptions for women’s behavior #expands (0.82) — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 337
• Advertisers co-opted feminist rhetoric to sell household products #complicates (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 219
• Dressing for display makes women dependent on others’ recognition for self-worth #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1582
• Agentic women face backlash because agency is accepted only in men #expands (0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 756