The ads that time forgot
Seventies sexism that has to be seen to be believedRather like scurvy, pleated jeans and smoking carriages on trains, it’s an evil that belongs to another era. Overt sexism in recruitment ads is pretty much – more on that later – a thing of the past, knocked out of action by (among others) the 2010 Equality Act.
But seeing it today has a lurid fascination. It’s like watching Hitler addressing crowds in the mid-1930s: what were they thinking? you wonder. How could they possibly not know?
So, a friend of HRville was glancing through her collection of Pink magazines last week. (Pink was a 1970s lifestyle magazine aimed at teenage girls, and featured a mix of fashion and music articles.) Our friend sent us over a handful of scans that require precious little commentary, although naturally we couldn’t resist emphasising one or two of the more spectacularly disturbing elements.
Beware, though: those of a gender-equality disposition might find the following disturbing.
We’re hiring you because you’ll turn our customers on.
A tall, dark and handsome man pushes his head through the window, his lips tantalisingly close to our heroine’s pert, pronounced cheekbone.
The copy reads: Very often, a girl can do wonders for the bank’s business. She’s the one the customers talk to and get to know. If they come in more often than is strictly necessary, who are we to complain?’
Yes, you might have ‘O’ levels. (Loving the application form, by the way.) But that’s not what we want you for, darling. Looking as you good as you do, honey, you’re mortgage bait.
And if you think that’s the worst, well. Just you wait.
Work here, and we might be able to find you a husband.
See how she watches him write his cheque? She’s trying to catch his surname, so she can see how it suits her forename.
Clever girl: by working in the bank, she managed to snag a proper good catch. Which is what it’s all about, eh, girls?
Not that Barclays were the only bank to try the ‘Work Here And You Might Meet The One’ employee value proposition.
Hang on. We can find you a husband too!
Not to be outdone, NatWest pops up with ‘How Jill combines marriage with National Westminster.’
The copy says: ‘Jill… works in ‘foreign exchange’ at a London suburban branch of National Westminster.’ Her new husband Paul ‘manages securities at a neighbouring branch where Jill first met him (you see, our National Westminster girls really do get around)’.
Note how Jill works in ‘foreign exchange’ with quotation marks while Paul works in securities, without them? That’s because women aren’t supposed to be down with the professional lingo.
You won’t have to ‘fend for yourself’.
The military won’t be as bad, surely? Oh, hang on. There’s this ad for the Women’s Royal Army Corps. All’s going reasonably well (comparatively) until the penultimate paragraph. ‘All this without any worries about fending for yourself, or finding a friendly face to take your trouble to.’ Bet it didn’t say that in the recruitment ads for the Scots Guards.
Now of course, these ads are actually products of a different world: in the early seventies society was different and women were subject to different pressures, as reflected in the concepts and copy. We shouldn’t judge too heavily. But it’s interesting to see how much things have changed – refreshing, even.
That said, there are still misogynist clowns who are more than capable of placing depressingly sexist recruitment ads nowadays. Only last year a Toronto web firm whipped up a Twitter storm with an ad stipulating ‘Female candidates preferred’. The year before a Pizza Hut branch in Surrey was reprimanded for placing an ad for ‘decent good looking girls’.
Finally, not from Pink, we found an American ad that seems to promise a lot more. At last, here was an avenue in which young women could become doctors, lawyers or executives.
Or is it? As ever, it pays to read the small print.
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