A drawing of a woman in the kitchen preparing some food, it is an image from the 1950s or so.
However, for some this stability had meant oppression, particularly in the age of second wave feminism. Ann Oakley, a well-known British sociologist, described in her 1974 analysis that a south africa rcs data housewife’s “primary economic function is vicarious: by servicing others, she enables them to engage in productive economic activity”, and that “instead of a productive role”, she would act as “the main consumer in the family”.[3] For some, the category shoehorned women into a narrow idea of Britain’s economy that suggested that their key role should be as a carer in the family who was principally not an economic producer (like the husband typically was) but an economic consumer.
How did this categorisation present itself in marketing through this period? For our case here we’ll be looking at how Britain’s nationalised railway operator, British Rail, made use of market research to attract new consumers to the railway. Nationalised industries are an interesting case in point on their own, as we often assume that ‘market research’ is a tool for the private sector to understand its markets. In reality, there is a long history of public bodies using market research: government departments like the Empire Marketing Board and the Ministry of Information/Central Office of Information were proficient international market researchers – and so were nationalised industries.