Only 29% of American women believe advertising portrays them accurately

“Women are fighting greasy pots and pans.”

With those words, Procter & Gamble found itself an unlikely adversary in 1993: An 11-year-old named Meghan Markle, now more widely known as the Duchess of Sussex. 

“It’s always ‘mom does this’ and ‘mom does that,’” she said on Nick News at the time. So she wrote to P&G’s president and proposed a tweak: It should say “people,” not “women.” The change was made.

Since then, P&G has been on the forefront of addressing gender stereotypes in ads, finding fans and critics along the way. The consumer goods giant is home to brands like Gillette, which made headlines for its 2019 ad addressing toxic masculinity, and Always, the brand behind 2014’s viral sensation #LikeaGirl, highlighting the negative impact of the phrase. 

Nearly 30 years after Markle raised her concerns to P&G, America continues to grapple with the same issues. Much of advertising’s portrayal of women still misses the mark. It’s often sexist and reductive, and perpetuates centuries-old cultural stereotypes of what society “expects” women to be.

Exclusive research for Marketer Must Read from data intelligence company Morning Consult found that only 29 percent of U.S.-based women believe they are represented accurately in advertising. A meager 6 percent describe that portrayal as “very accurate.” Meanwhile, 44 percent of men say that women are represented accurately in ads. 

Marketers live in fear of seeing their mistakes go viral -- especially on hot-button issues like gender and race, another area in which representation has failed to catch up with the population. And while gender representation in ads -- or the lack thereof -- has long been a talking point in the industry, groups like the Association of National Advertisers’ initiative SeeHer are pushing the industry toward a more representative future. 

Across the globe, many countries have moved far ahead of the U.S. on these matters. Norway banned sexist advertising as far back as 1978. In Sweden, Stockholm’s City Council banned sexist ads in public spaces in 2018. In 2019, the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority announced a ban on gender stereotyping in ads “that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence.” Other countries, including Spain, Austria, Greece, Belgium and Finland, have established different guidelines to address gender discrimination in advertising. 

“MORE THAN MOM:” WHAT AMERICAN WOMEN WANT TO SEE

In an exclusive survey for Marketer Must Read by Burns Group’s BrandInformers practice, 500 U.S.-based women ages 17-73 were given the opportunity to describe how women should be portrayed in advertising compared to how they are today. Though answers ranged from it's “just fine” to “embarrassing and disturbing,” the majority of responses show a hunger for advertising that’s less sexualized and more inclusive of women of different sizes, shapes and ethnicities. Many also highlighted women’s portrayal as “complainers” and “Stepford wives.” They expressed a desire to see women as “more than mom” and in what have traditionally been referred to as “men’s roles” -- as fighter pilots, construction workers and CEOs.

“I wish that women would be portrayed as breadwinners,” said a 25-year-old Black woman living in Illinois. Similarly, a 37-year-old white woman in Tennessee said, “I just want women to be shown as being able to be powerful, in charge of their careers, the ones that are making the decision.”

(The word cloud below visualizes the terms that appeared most often in respondents' answers to the Burns Group survey. The larger the word, the more often it appeared.)

A 44-year-old Hispanic woman in Pennsylvania said she’d like to see “a natural looking woman without plastic surgery, without Photoshop or filters. Just a normal, human, unaltered woman.” A 57-year-old white woman in North Carolina said, “The media puts forth the most perfect-looking women and acts as if that's the norm when it isn't. It sets an unrealistic goal for young girls and makes women feel they can't measure up.”

Several survey participants said that progress had been made in inclusive advertising and pointed to brands like Athleta, which has been a leader in showcasing different body types, and Progressive, the insurance company that introduced its ubiquitous spokesperson Flo in 2008. “I want to see more representation of women like her in the front and not just the background,” a respondent said. 

In the Morning Consult research, which was fielded to 2,200 Americans in late February, there were interesting overlaps in how men and women believe women are represented in different ad categories. Marketers take note: The automotive and personal finance categories were considered the worst offenders among both men and women.

The Super Bowl, one of advertising’s biggest events of the year, reflected the continued representation challenges. An Adweek analysis of this year’s ads showed that only 14 of the 67 public figures who appeared in in-game spots were women. Racial diversity was similarly paltry; more than 60 percent of those featured were white. 

But one ad stood out on this topic. In its “Come Clean to Close the Chore Gap” Super Bowl pre-show ad, P&G brands Dawn and Swiffer encouraged chore sharing, citing its research that shows chores are handled by just one person in 65 percent of U.S. households. What the spot doesn’t mention: 63 percent of women say they’re the ones to do that work.

HOW WE MOVE FORWARD

The ANA SeeHer initiative launched in 2016, with a goal to “increase the accurate representation of women and girls” in ads and content. The group's current goal is for an “80 percent bias-free media ecosystem by 2030.” (You can read more on that here.)

Gail Tifford, chief brand officer of Weight Watchers (now known as WW) and co-founder of SeeHer, points to three things as driving momentum. 

“This was not a woman's thing,” Tifford says, citing the collaboration with men like P&G’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard and others who have served as champions. “This is about doing right for the world but also doing right for business.”

And in a metrics-obsessed industry, SeeHer’s measurement system has been an important lever for change, Tifford says. The initiative’s Gender Equality Measure (GEM) is currently used to identify gender bias in ads and programming in 14 geographical markets. 

As one of the world’s largest advertisers, Pritchard in his speeches says P&G’s goal is to meet SeeHer’s GEM metric for accurate portrayal of women and girls in all of their ads. Per Pritchard, 90 percent of their ads currently meet or exceed that threshold, up 20 points from three years ago. He cites GEM data, explaining that the accurate portrayal of women and girls leads to a 10 percent increase in trust ratings and up to a 25 percent increase in purchase. 

So, in a world of “cancel culture,” how do organizations like SeeHer make a positive impact on gender diversity in ads?   

SeeHer president Nadine Karp McHugh says it’s not about “naming and shaming.” Instead, she stresses the importance of “celebrating” those who get it right. 

“You can't underestimate the responsibility that we have as marketers in creating culture,” Tifford adds. “There are two things that we have control over. One is the ads and the content that we create as marketers… And I think that's where we have made the most progress. The second piece is where we put our ad dollars and celebrating -- not punishing but celebrating -- and putting our dollars toward content creators that are furthering our mission.”

Pritchard puts emphasis on this as well: “Brands are judged by the company they keep.” 

“We will not stop until we achieve equal representation in every link of the creative and media supply chain,” he says. 

Over the next 30 years, the world will be watching closely to see if -- and how quickly -- the portrayal of women in advertising changes. 

This article is part of LinkedIn’s #ConversationsForChange initiative for International Women’s Day. Follow our comprehensive coverage here.