Sexism in Advertising: Times, are they a ‘changing?

Sexism in advertising has been a norm for long. Whether or not you are a fan of Mad Men, you would have been living under a rock to not realize that advertising is guilty of everything from selling cement through a bikini model to having a woman in lacy underwear advocate safe driving.

Advertising as an industry has come under crossfire for their work, pay gaps, objectification, stereotyping (pink glue for girls, arggghh) and (maybe) most importantly the #MeToo movement.

Some thoughts:

Advertising is making efforts to change

Unlike a lot of other industries, advertising has the power to undo.

Made an ad saying ‘The Best a Man Can Get?’

Years later, you can now talk about ‘The Best Men Can Be.’ While the ad in question was equal parts lauded and criticized, it is important to recognize that an industry which built cultural conversations around the aspiration of being a certain kind of man can switch to an altogether different line of conversation.

Why do we talk about ads but never blame clients?

It’s interesting that all industries sanction agencies to make ads for them but seldom get embroiled in the cultural conversation that surrounds sexism in advertising. Many a hapless servicing folks will tell you of instances where they were asked for thinner, fairer models or for a particular ‘look’. So companies that are still making sexist ads are perhaps more to blame...

In fact, advertising has never shied from employing women (not in leadership roles or with model behavior but historically, even entry level roles were out of reach for most women).

Advertising has benefited from progressive cultural shifts

You have got to admit that the lifeblood of advertising is to be contemporary and rooted in cultural realities of the world around them. Pay gaps exist, yes but is advertising the only culprit? No. The industry was caught in the eye of the storm during #MeToo because unlike manufacturing, hospitality or finance – women in the industry had the gumption to speak up. Ditto for media.

There’s an interesting parallel – Kerala reports the highest number of sexual assault cases not because they have the highest assaults but the highest education rates.

Advertising - maybe an easy scapegoat?

It’s easier to criticize advertising work unlike say an Investment Bank. Doesn’t absolve sexism at all but it’s easier to judge a woman is draped across a man as objectification rather than a woman facing casual sexism while doing financial modeling.

Missing on some details, maybe?

While there is an emphasis on the portrayal of women in the ads themselves, critics are missing nuances such as digital landscape and how media targeting to women still follows sexist norms that traditional advertising did.  Another important thing to know is that advertising has to zoom into a target group for which stereotyping is often needed (we can write articles on share the load, but perhaps it is speaking to the majority women or household maids who still do the laundry).

Stirring communication and conversation can only do so when cultural habits and sociological patterns still remain the same (and if brands cared they’d work on that but behavior change is SO hard to effect).

To sum it up, advertising as an industry has a long way to go (just like pretty much everyone else). While we outrage at deodorant commercials and cheer for #ShareTheLoad ads, blaming ads (instead of the society from where these cultural narratives stem) is akin to missing the forest for the trees.

(Views personal)