Conclusion

Looking at advertisements in post-World War 2 period, white working women are displayed in submissive, nurturing and supportive jobs, such as secretaries or nurses. During this time period, the labor market asked women to leave jobs that “belonged” to men and go back to their households; therefore, the characteristics listed above were elicited for women and their position in the workplace was defined with these adjectives.

Today, advertisements offer a different portrayal of white working women. Women are portrayed strong and independent as business professionals in upper-tier jobs. Living at a time where importance of gender equality is often brought up and multiple women empowerment movements have taken place, new characteristics elicited for women in advertising seem to be strong and independent.

In conclusion, my research suggests that advertisements reflect a selective range of cultural values. They focus on certain aspects of the culture they are a part of and present that to their target audience. On the other hand, what they choose to focus on depends on the time period and current historical and cultural situation.

Limitations

Limitations I encountered doing the project were ambiguity and lack of portrayal of white working women in advertising. Most advertisements attempt to not give so much context, so that they can impact a broader audience. Less context gives audience the power to take the story the way they want to take and relate to themselves. However, it also makes it harder to see what professionally depicted women work as, for those who are trying to be objective. Therefore, there were cases where I had to guess the jobs of the women displayed. Another limitation I came across was finding the advertisements. There are not nearly many advertisements which portray white working women, especially compared to those which portray women in the households. Eventually, I found a number of advertisements, but there definitely was a lack of resource in advertising archives.

Future research

Throughout my research, I realized there was a lack of advertisements displaying women of color and those that did display women of color in the workforce, displayed them as police officers or cashiers. Therefore, this could be a good starting point for future research on how women of different races are portrayed in advertising and whether there is a distinction between how they are represented or not.