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Ding Dong! Avon Calling!: The Women and Men of Avon Products, Incorporated de Katina Manko

Ding Dong! Avon Calling!: The Women and Men of Avon Products, Incorporated

Autor Katina Manko
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 28 oct 2021

Considerăm că Ding Dong! Avon Calling! reprezintă o contribuție esențială la istoria economică și socială a Americii, oferind prima analiză academică riguroasă a gigantului cosmetic Avon Products, Inc. Spre deosebire de lucrările anterioare care priveau fenomenul prin prisma nostalgiei, Katina Manko utilizează arhivele companiei pentru a descifra mecanismele unei afaceri care a transformat sufrageriile americane în spații antreprenoriale încă din 1886. Reținem aici o dualitate fascinantă: o corporație administrată aproape exclusiv de bărbați care, în mod pragmatic, a oferit femeilor o cale spre independență financiară într-o epocă în care munca în afara căminului era adesea stigmatizată.

Structura narativă urmărește evoluția reprezentantelor Avon de la simple vânzătoare la domiciliu la poziții de management, evidențiind modul în care rețelele sociale feminine au fost valorificate pentru profit. Din punct de vedere istoric, lucrarea completează perspectiva oferită de Hope in a Jar de Kathy Peiss, adăugând o dimensiune instituțională și corporativă detaliată acolo unde Peiss se concentra pe cultura generală a frumuseții. De asemenea, dacă The Direct Option de Richard C. Bartlett prezintă vânzarea directă ca pe un ghid de carieră contemporan, volumul de față oferă fundamentul istoric și critic, explicând de ce acest model a rezistat mai bine de un secol.

Analiza este precisă, evitând idealizarea și punând accent pe realitățile economice ale „ambasadoarelor frumuseții”. Tonul este unul academic, dar accesibil, relevând modul în care sloganul „Ding Dong! Avon Calling!” a devenit un pilon al culturii de consum. Este o lectură necesară pentru cei interesați de intersecția dintre gen, capitalism și antreprenoriat feminin.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780190499822
ISBN-10: 0190499826
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 40 halftones
Dimensiuni: 238 x 162 x 34 mm
Greutate: 0.58 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte cercetătorilor și pasionaților de istorie socială care doresc să înțeleagă rădăcinile antreprenoriatului feminin. Cititorul va câștiga o perspectivă documentată asupra modului în care Avon a prefigurat economia flexibilă de astăzi, oferind o lecție despre cum rețelele comunitare pot deveni motoare economice globale. Este o analiză lucidă a modului în care femeile au negociat spațiul dintre familie și carieră într-o lume corporativă masculină.

Despre autor

Katina Manko este istoric specializat în istoria femeilor și a afacerilor din Statele Unite. Expertiza sa în domeniu este confirmată de rolul activ pe care l-a avut în conservarea patrimoniului industrial, ajutând personal la achiziționarea și organizarea arhivelor companiei Avon pentru cercetare academică. Prin volumul de față, publicat la Oxford University Press, ea reușește să integreze experiența de arhivist cu rigoarea cercetării istorice, oferind o lucrare de referință despre evoluția muncii feminine în secolul XX.

Descriere

The Avon Lady acquired iconic status in twentieth century American culture. This first history of Avon tells the story of a direct sales company that was both a giant in its industry and a kitchen-table entrepreneurial venture.With their distinctive greeting at the homes across the country--Ding Dong! Avon Calling!--sales ladies brought door-to-door sales of makeup, perfume, and other products to American women beginning in 1886. Working for the company enabled women to earn money on the side and even become financially independent in a respectable profession while selling Avon's wares to friends, family, and neighborhood networks.Ding Dong! Avon Calling! is the story of women and entrepreneurship, and of an innovative corporation largely managed by men that empowered women to exploit networks of other women and their community for profit. Founded in the late nineteenth century, Avon grew into a massive international direct sales company in which millions of "ambassadors of beauty" sat in their customers' living rooms with a sample case, catalogue, and a conversational sales pitch. Avon was unique in American business history for its reliance on women as representatives, promising them not just sales positions, but a chance to have a business of their own. Being an Avon Lady avoided the stigma that was often attached to middle-class women's work outside the home and enabled women to maintain the delicate balance of work and family. Drawing for the first time on company records she helped acquire for archives, Katina Manko illuminates Avon's inner workings, uncovers the lives of its representatives, and shows how women slowly rose into the company's middle and upper management. Avon called itself "The Company for Women" and championed its high flyers, but its higher echelons remained dominated by men well into the 1990s.Avon is more than perfumes and toiletries, but a brand built on women knocking on doors and chatting up neighbors. It thrived for more than a century through the deceptively simple technique of women directly selling beauty to women at home.

Recenzii

Manko details Avon's history from its origins as the California Perfume Company through its expansion in the 20th century....For most, Avon was not a career but a small supplement to their household economies. Manko differentiates the experiences of the women who made up the direct sales force, most of whom worked for Avon less than two years, offering profiles of women who rarely served as company executives until after the sexual revolution. Using their social networks to sell beauty products door-to-door, middle-class women were able to enter the labor force without challenging traditional stances on women's work. The book also explores Andrea Jung's appointment as CEO and the corporate charity initiatives she instituted to support women with breast cancer and anti-domestic violence causes....Useful for business or gender studies programs.
Katina Manko's thoroughly researched and deftly written book on Avon products presents a fresh take on the beauty and fashion industry, one that breaks with and demystifies the cliches of the past. [...] Manko's nuanced tale of a company, an industry and a group of women evolving over time will make a lasting contribution to our understanding of how economics and gender typically play out. If we are to build a distinctively gendered theory of economics from which to understand women's disadvantages and to fight for their financial liberty, books like this are essential.
Ding Dong! Avon Calling! is a lively and informative account of a firm that sold women cosmetics and promised them entrepreneurial independence. By taking Avon Ladies seriously as economic actors, Katina Manko reveals the nuances and complexities of gender, race, and enterprise, challenging our very notion of what counts as a business. Anyone interested in the economic history of the twentieth century must read this book.
Manko skillfully combines deep archival research and personal narratives to provide a nuanced study of how Avon gave women the opportunity to earn money and assume corporate responsibilities, yet retained a gendered culture which reserved top management for men.
In this thoroughly researched and beautifully written book, Katina Manko deftly weaves together the history of an iconic American company with that of the women sales agents who helped build it. Equal parts business, social, and women's history, Manko unravels the larger story of women's growing need and desire for an income throughout the twentieth century and the ways in which direct selling—marketed as a form of entrepreneurship—enabled them to simultaneously stay within gender norms of motherhood while also moving beyond them into the wider world of business enterprise.
Katina Manko's Ding Dong! Avon Calling! is a compelling business history of the steady rise and the rapid fall of a direct-sales colossus. An American company created by a man and managed by men, Avon enlisted an army of middle-class white women to sell its products and image to other middle-class white women. Its business model was based on women's need and desire to function simultaneously in commerce and in the home. Manko describes a business culture built upon the suspect notion of women as independent contractors, leaving open the question of whether such a model was supportive or exploitative. In the age of Uber, Manko has given us a piquant exploration of the blurred lines between owners, managers, sub-contractors, and female working stiffs.
Adding much to the study of women and business history, Manko's fresh and sophisticated contribution uncovers a precursor to our gig economy that for too long has been dismissed as nostalgia. Manko's nuanced examination of the inner workings of Avon reveals contradictions and continuities in paternalistic decision-making that nevertheless opened the door for both beauty sales and female entrepreneurship that operated often as a side job.

Notă biografică

Katina Manko is an independent scholar specializing in US women's history. She has taught at Bard College, Ramapo College, and Merrimack College, and currently teaches History for the Yeshiva University High School for Girls. She lives in New York City.