[1]http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/625/who-decided-wom...
"The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.) The aim of what Hope calls the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn't know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair."
[2]http://history.barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/kirste...
"In July of 1915, the first Gillette razor for women came on the market. But where Gillette had responded to a clear void in the men’s hair removal market, he now faced the dilemma of promoting to a market that did not yet exist. Hence Gillette was responsible for introducing to American women the revolutionary concept of shaving."
[3]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1982....