Gender and Advertising

To go about researching this project, it required developing a basis for analyzing gender and advertisements, understanding advertising language and what companies were emphasizing, and interpreting how the development of stoves was affecting the working lives of women. My sources and what I built my framework from are all available in my bibliography.

Originally when I was approaching questions for this project, I was wondering how stoves were improving the lives of women. One element that I was missing was the understanding of what women and their families were looking for, or at least what they were being sold as desirable qualities for their stoves and kitchen ranges.

Below is a flipbook of Fawcett Better Baking ranges. It is one of the few depictions of men in my sources, and the only one I have of a man not as someone working manufacturing kitchen ranges. I find it interesting, not only for the male chef on the cover, but also because of the contrast of the roles to what is inside. Though there are no full images of a woman or man inside, there is a woman’s feet on the fourth page to show the ample foot room under the ranges. There is also a man’s hand on the sixteenth page reviewing the features of the ranges, which suggests a connection to men in the decision making process for their scientific understanding of the physical components of kitchen ranges rather than any expertise in using them.