Women’s Business

- Ilene Kantrov (b. 1950- )

               

This essay is about some successful American business women. Lydia E. Pinkham was the pioneer among them. In 1879, she prepared a vegetable compound. She advertised it as the best remedy for the falling of the womb and all female weaknesses.

               

Pinkham used clever marketing techniques. She supported women’s rights, temperance and fiscal reform through her advertisements. She not only sold her product but also provided practical suggestions about diet, exercise, and hygiene to her customers. However, she exploited traditional feminine fears to promote her product. As a result, she earned a huge profit.

               

The other businesswomen also followed Pinkham’s footsteps. They often cultivated the image of mother or grandmother. But to earn profit in the market, they often forgot the feminine ideals. Margaret Rudkin and Jennie Grossinger were the examples of such businesswomen.

               

The businesswomen transformed their home crafts into successful businesses. They mixed their sense of women’s tastes with courage, creation, and marketing innovations.

               

Pinkham started marketing her herbal products only after the collapse of her husband’s real estate business. Before that she had applied her knowledge about folk remedies in her own family for many years. Margaret Rudkin had started baking wheat bread for her ill son. Later, she expanded this knowledge into a successful business. Elizabeth Arden produced and sold many cosmetics. She also included hairstyling, ready-made and custom clothes, and advice on nutrition and exercise into her business. Arden’s competitor Helena Rubinstein published and sold a book about dieting to her customers.

               

The female entrepreneurs believed that they were not only earning profit but also contributing for social and moral cause of women’s uplift. Gertrude Muller sold her childcare products with pamphlets she wrote about child raising. Annie Turnbo-Malone marketed her “poro” system of hairdressing as a vehicle for the uplift of her race and a passport to economic independence for women.

               

The businesswomen also contributed greatly to hospitals, schools and cultural organizations. But they put profit ahead of altruism. They were not different from their male counterparts in cheating their customers.