Peggy Olson’s pitch for a new ad campaign met with blank stares and patronising smirks. In the 1960s world of ‘Mad Men’, women were expected to look pretty and fetch the coffee, not design advertising campaigns. Despite her ingenuity, Don Draper and his colleagues were deaf and dismissive.
Outstanding article, and it got me thinking if this also partially explains the difference in the perception of women (and feminism) in North America between college educated professionals and the non-college educated working class (very broad over-generalizations but it’s a comment not an academic paper)?
My observation has been that even though white collar professional jobs do tend to have gender segregation by role and department, overall the firm has rough parity between genders (there is even a joke that when a man of the software engineering tribe wants to find a mate he goes to a marketing tribe event).
Whereas my impression (which could be wrong) is that gender segregation for non-college educated working class employment happens more at the firm level vs the department level.
For example, almost all plumbers, electricians, and carpenters are men, and the firms they work at are usually not large administrative operations, so at the firm level it’s almost all men with a small layer of administration often done by women.
On the flip side, almost all of the low wage care jobs (child care worker, elder care, etc). Are held by women, and at the firm level this also appears to hold true.
I guess this is a rambling way of saying that your article sparked these thoughts, so thank you!
Outstanding article, and it got me thinking if this also partially explains the difference in the perception of women (and feminism) in North America between college educated professionals and the non-college educated working class (very broad over-generalizations but it’s a comment not an academic paper)?
My observation has been that even though white collar professional jobs do tend to have gender segregation by role and department, overall the firm has rough parity between genders (there is even a joke that when a man of the software engineering tribe wants to find a mate he goes to a marketing tribe event).
Whereas my impression (which could be wrong) is that gender segregation for non-college educated working class employment happens more at the firm level vs the department level.
For example, almost all plumbers, electricians, and carpenters are men, and the firms they work at are usually not large administrative operations, so at the firm level it’s almost all men with a small layer of administration often done by women.
On the flip side, almost all of the low wage care jobs (child care worker, elder care, etc). Are held by women, and at the firm level this also appears to hold true.
I guess this is a rambling way of saying that your article sparked these thoughts, so thank you!
Fascinating point!! Yes, I must look at data on occupational sex segregation by class!!! Nice!!
Actually I think I have a blog on that!
I do https://open.substack.com/pub/draliceevans/p/why-is-blue-collar-work-still-male-dominated?r=zccyx&utm_medium=ios see first graph.
Well done drama that it was, I could barely watch the male/female interactions in Madmen.