The purpose of this guide is to help researchers locate information within the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History collection about women across the world of advertising. The Hartman Center holds abundant materials on women working within the advertising world, women represented in advertisements, and trade material on marketing to women.
In the 2010s, we acquired some new collections on these themes, including the papers of feminists activist and media scholar Jean Kilbourne and the papers of Rena Bartos (featured on the right), a marketing researcher and advertising executive who worked for both McCann-Erickson and J. Walter Thompson before starting her own firm. You can read about some of Bartos's groundbreaking research here.
We have several blog posts profiling materials this collection, including the 1946 book Patsy Breaks Into Advertising and the 1916-1917 diary of advertising manager Irene Sickle Sims. In 2016, we organized an exhibit discussing the status of women working in advertising over the years, "Agencies Prefer Men!" The Women of Madison Avenue. Read about the exhibit in the article below from RL, the Rubenstein Library's quarterly publication.
