A woman from another time: Elizabeth Cady Stanton with her sons Daniel and Henry, 1848.
What good is activism?
Consider being a woman in the 1840s and deciding that enough was enough. Among other things you felt it was past time for your sex to have the right to vote. In 1848, at Seneca Falls, New York, an early women’s rights convention was held. The event is a significant milepost in the history of women’s rights in the United States. Elizabeth Cady Stanton authored and presented the Declaration of Sentiments at the convention. The document was worded like the American Declaration of Independence.
Of the three hundred attendees, only one hundred signed the Declaration: 68 women and 32 men. The Declaration demanded that women be given the right to vote as well as other civic and domestic rights and responsibilities. It was considered a radical document in 1848, so radical that two-thirds of the attendees didn’t even sign it. Those gathered agreed that women needed more equality with men, but many felt that pushing for the right to vote was simply unrealistic and that it was pushing too far too fast.
If you were passionately devoted to that cause was it worth it? It wasn’t until 1920 that women won the right to vote on a national level in the United States. Most of those who were at Seneca Falls were long gone by 1920.
The actress Elizabeth Moss photographed in 2009. Moss plays Peggy Olson on AMC's television show Mad Men.
Jump forward to the early 1960s and consider the life of Peggy Olson. Peggy is a fictional character on the television show “Mad Men,” which is set in New York City around the lives of the employees of Sterling Cooper, an advertising agency. Peggy lives at another time that is pivotal for American women. Though women began to vote throughout the nation in the 1920s, and their vote had an immediate impact on electoral politics, it remained—from our perspective—a man’s world. Women had their place and with few exceptions, that was at home.
Peggy Olson came of age when doors that had long been shut began to let a few women through. Shy and timid when we first meet her in 1960, Peggy takes full advantage of the cracks in the structure to begin a rise through the ranks of Sterling Cooper. By the middle of 1963 she is a junior executive with her own secretary, she is confident, competent, and doing well—as well as can be expected for a career woman of her age and time.
Peggy is not the type of activist that marches in the streets, but she is a woman who knows what she wants in the workplace. There is a human tendency to believe that whatever you achieve is because of your individual efforts, your unique strengths, and your own gumption. It’s a tough world and whatever you make of yourself is a result of your own effort. There is some truth to this, but it is not the full story. It ignores a larger truth.
Every individual lives in a specific time and place. The opportunities that they have are largely dictated by factors external to them. If Peggy were just ten or fifteen years older her life would have taken a different course as a matter of necessity. Another character on the show, Joan Holloway (who marries and becomes Joan Harris), is almost ten years older than Peggy. Joan’s worldview as someone who needs to be subservient to men stands in stark contrast to Peggy’s. It isn’t clear that Peggy set out to become an executive, but as opportunities presented themselves she took full advantage of them.
At RIESTER, we salute the women and men who opened up the world so that women have more freedom in how they live their lives. We believe women deserve as much freedom to choose as men in how they contribute to society. Our staff is filled with women, including at the highest levels of the agency. Their careers are possible because of those who met in New York in 1848, the many who continued to pursue the goals of Seneca Falls in the decades that followed, and because of the real life Peggy Olsons who paved the way for them. RIESTER doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
A new generation of activists changed the role of women in American society again in the later 1960s and early 1970s. Our world today is radically different from Peggy Olson’s world of almost fifty years ago. Today women are contributing in ways, and on a scale, that is unprecedented in modern times.
RIESTER believes that activism, for the right causes, is a very good thing. We are here to be activists for your brand. Whether you’re selling a consumer product or a broader cause, RIESTER has the expertise needed to take your brand to the next level through Brand Activism–our unique approach to marketing.
