Ding Dong! Avon Calling!
The Women and Men of Avon Products, Incorporated
Katina Manko
Reviews and Awards
"Ding Dong! Avon Calling! is a lively and informative account of a firm that sold women cosmetics and promised them entrepreneurial independence. By taking Avon Ladies seriously as economic actors, Katina Manko reveals the nuances and complexities of gender, race, and enterprise, challenging our very notion of what counts as a business. Anyone interested in the economic history of the twentieth century must read this book." -- Wendy Gamber, Indiana University
"Manko skillfully combines deep archival research and personal narratives to provide a nuanced study of how Avon gave women the opportunity to earn money and assume corporate responsibilities, yet retained a gendered culture which reserved top management for men." -- Geoffrey Jones, author of Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry
"In this thoroughly researched and beautifully written book, Katina Manko deftly weaves together the history of an iconic American company with that of the women sales agents who helped build it. Equal parts business, social, and women's history, Manko unravels the larger story of women's growing need and desire for an income throughout the twentieth century and the ways in which direct selling—marketed as a form of entrepreneurship—enabled them to simultaneously stay within gender norms of motherhood while also moving beyond them into the wider world of business enterprise." -- Debra Michals, Merrimack College
"Katina Manko's Ding Dong! Avon Calling! is a compelling business history of the steady rise and the rapid fall of a direct-sales colossus. An American company created by a man and managed by men, Avon enlisted an army of middle-class white women to sell its products and image to other middle-class white women. Its business model was based on women's need and desire to function simultaneously in commerce and in the home. Manko describes a business culture built upon the suspect notion of women as independent contractors, leaving open the question of whether such a model was supportive or exploitative. In the age of Uber, Manko has given us a piquant exploration of the blurred lines between owners, managers, sub-contractors, and female working stiffs." -- Mary A. Yeager, University of California, Los Angeles