Ad Women in a Mad(Men) World: Negotiating Gender and Power in the Advertising Business 1920-1940

The rise of American advertising in the 1920s opened up possibilities for women to enter the field as skilled, well-paid copywriters and campaign directors. Bringing with them a “woman’s point of view” of the typical consumer into the business, these women managed to carve out positions of power and influence as experts in this men-led industry. Highly educated, white, middle-class, often involved in reform work prior to their entrance into advertising, adwomen embodied a unique position as representatives of the “Modern Woman” and as influential authority in shaping her image and meaning.

This paper, by focusing on the J. Walter Thompson Company’s female workers, examines how they negotiated their gendered and professional identities in an industry that was very much based on the gendered division between savvy male adman and gullible female consumers. These women had to mediate the tensions between their self-perception as independent, assertive, modern women, and the need to capitalize on their “feminine” expertise that was often based on a sexual biased understanding of women as consumers. Relegated into gender segregated department and working on accounts directed only to women, these adwomen nonetheless succeeded to create a work culture that not only enabled them to gain equal standing with their male colleagues, but also to use the workplace as a realm to empower and promote women in the business, while redefining popular notions of femininity in this period. By doing so, these women helped to transform the advertising business and the role of consumption in popular imagination.