Gendered Advertising During the 1950s

The economic landscape of both the United States and Canada experienced a significant transformation during the 1950s, fueled by post-war economic growth. This era of prosperity allowed families to purchase goods they were unable to afford during wartime and the years that followed, including the telephone. Additionally, technological advancements during this time, such as the introduction of direct long-distance calls, significantly reduced the need for switchboard operators—who were primarily female.[1]

The most significant differences I have observed between the 1940s and the 1950s in terms of gendered telephone advertisements are that there are fewer advertisements featuring people, and there are fewer advertisements centred around women as we saw in the 1940s. Instead, advertisements in the 1950s tended to focus on the technological advancements and benefits of the telephone. Despite these differences, gendered language and stereotypes persisted in certain advertisements with women remaining in domestic roles and men in professional ones.

For example, as seen in Figure 1, statistics from The Diamond State Telephone Company are at the forefront of the advertisement, indicating that there is an interest in the way telephone services function. In the advertisement, there are representations of people who both use the telephone and work for the telephone company. In the top right-hand corner of the advertisement, using imagery, the company is saying that anyone can use the telephone regardless of gender or occupation and there are many men in this image, which strays from the norm of telephone advertisements from the 1940s. In addition, the image on the top left and in the middle of the bottom row of Figure 1 has both men and women representing workers for the telephone service. Unlike in the early 1940s, none of the men are in army uniforms but the same division remains with men who are the workers installing the telephone lines and women who are the switchboard operators.

The introduction of direct long-distance calls and automated telephone systems during the 1950s led to a significant decrease in the need for switchboard operators, a profession that was predominantly held by women. As a result, many women who had been employed as switchboard operators were suddenly out of work. For many women, this would not just have been a loss of work that could be easily replaced, as many women would have been switchboard operators during the second world war, and perhaps the first world war as well, so their skillset had become largely obsolete.

[1] Emily Yellin, Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us: Customer Service and What It Reveals About Our World and Our Lives (New York: Free Press, 2009), 31.