Professor Isabel Menéndez has researched advertising that eliminates sexist stereotypes and offers inspiring messages to women, but also brands that only seek to associate themselves with feminism out of interest.

“Advertising is a reflection of the society of its time,” goes a well-known mantra repeated ad nauseam in sociological and historical marketing studies. Accepted as universally true, this phrase also explains, roughly speaking, the evolution of advertisements aimed at women over the last decades.

As we know, in the 1970s Spanish women needed the authorization of their husband or father to open a bank account. This blatant inequality was reflected in advertising slogans such as “Help your wife, behave like a man, and buy her a Kelvinator washing machine“, which blatantly showed the prevailing male chauvinism.

Over the years, little by little, as the vindication of women’s rights has achieved certain advances, advertisements have adopted somewhat different attitudes. The pressure of society (and not so much agreeing with the feminist struggle) has made the big brands feel that it is necessary to adapt to a new reality that, however, sometimes they do not fully understand, which continues to cause gross errors.

According to the study Meaningful Women II presented this year by Havas Media Group Spain, women in our country still do not feel fully represented in today’s advertising. “The score on whether women are adequately portrayed in advertisements was 6.3 out of 10 after viewing a broad sample of spots by more than 2,000 women,” explains Dionisia Mata, Insights Director of Havas Media Group Spain and responsible for the study. “For its part, identification with the models of women and the situations that reflect the creativities only reaches a pass mark (5.3).”

The study does, however, recognize that there has been some progress in the pattern of women’s representation compared to past eras. “There is a tendency to balance the presence of men and women in advertising. There is a significant percentage of spots that show women in independent roles of personal autonomy (work, leisure, consumption…) and cases of explicit sexualization are already in the minority,” says Mata. “However, there are still a not inconsiderable 24% of ads in which women are represented only as mothers, caregivers or those responsible for household chores. In any case, many more than men appear in these roles. There is therefore still a notable bias in terms of the distribution of tasks”.

In short, women see positive changes in the equality-advertising binomial, but not enough. “The changes are often perceived as forced, with somewhat artificial executions, with which they do not identify,” continues Mata. “They think it is an advertising that has evolved towards ‘political correctness’ so as not to be singled out as discriminatory, but which lacks courage, spontaneity and social listening to reflect current models of women and even be at the forefront of social progress in gender equality issues.” It seems difficult, therefore, to describe this advertising as truly feminist.

A brief history of femvertising

According to Isabel Menéndez, professor of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising at the UOC and author of the book Can advertising be feminist? feminist advertising, or femvertising, has existed for decades, although its beginnings were somewhat timid, and she gives as an example The Body Shop’s well-known Ruby doll campaign, which was very groundbreaking in the 1990s, or the Dove soap campaigns in the early 2000s, which featured women of all sizes. “However, the term is much more recent,” he explains. “It came up just under ten years ago, at an Advertising Show held in New York in 2014, and first appeared in the report. SheKnows Media that was presented on that occasion”.

However, studies on this type of marketing are still scarce, even more so six years ago, when Menéndez began to take an interest in the subject. ” Femvertising had not aroused much interest, because I barely found a few articles, almost all published abroad and in English,” she recalls. “From then on, I have continued to delve into the subject, which has led me to publish several articles and now the book, the first to be published in Spain and one of the very few that have been written worldwide on this issue”.

The professor defines feminist advertising as “that which eliminates sexist stereotypes and also offers inspiring messages to women, aimed at increasing their self-esteem and autonomy (what we usually call ’empowerment’). In addition, it should use diversity in all senses (women of all types, sizes, origins…) and not abuse image editing to avoid building impossible ideals. In short, advertising with social responsibility, which seeks social change. In my opinion, it is the answer to the demands for an end to sexist advertising,” she explains.

The eternal stalking of ‘feminiwashing’.

If we said before that advertising has a great capacity to adapt to the times, it also usually displays excellent skills to capture trends and try to associate them with the brands it is promoting, sometimes for free. It happens very often with the issue of climate change, known as climate change. greenwashing but also with feminism. In this case, we are talking about feminiwashing.

“There is always suspicion because firms today may want to embrace feminism because it has acquired a social prestige that it didn’t have before,” Menendez maintains. “It is not easy to distinguish it and it would seem necessary to have some sort of Bechdel test to do so. I have constructed something like this in the book: I propose a series of questions to detect feminiwashing (inspired by literature that has studied greenwashing or pinkwashing).” The professor poses questions such as “Does the cause have to do with the brand?”, “Is the company inviting reflection?” or “Is the brand committed forever?”, in order to detect these cases of advantageous use of femvertising.

However, Menéndez does not totally condemn feminiwashing as, according to her, it can have certain benefits. “From the consumers’ point of view, a non-injurious message that is committed to equality and inspirational for women is better, even if the advertising company doesn’t believe it or has built it out of fashion or opportunism,” she explains. “We consumers are very tired of insulting, degrading, stereotypical or anachronistic messages. From the company’s point of view, it is more complex, as it exposes itself to a reputation crisis that may not be in its best interest. In particular, I do not recommend using feminiwashing by opportunity, because if it is not part of the company’s vision/mission, dishonesty will soon be discovered.”

“On the other hand,” he continues, “it may perhaps contribute to a certain trivialization of the feminist message, to build a light feminism, which does not bother and which is very far from the authentic feminist agenda, that which does bother and which we are far from achieving. But I think the biggest risk is for the brands. Feminism has been struggling against the headwind for three centuries and will continue to do so with greater or lesser resistance”.

What do women want?

According to data from the Meaningful Women II report, women feel that there is still very strong body pressure, with thin, beautiful bodies on display and little racial and gender orientation diversity. This deficiency is very evident in specific sectors. “Technology or automotive, they have barely incorporated or are not doing femvertisingat all,” Menéndez says. “On the other hand, the cosmetics sector is the one that uses it the most, so it is easier to find very good examples there, although also some with a lot of room for improvement. This has been criticized a lot because it is restricted to traditionally feminine products (fashion, cosmetics, diets, hygiene products) and therefore does not break with the male/female binomial.”

“Women are demanding advertising that is more spontaneous and dares to reflect models and behaviors of women that are already normal in society,” notes Mata. “One of the biggest challenges of advertising communication in the representation of women is naturalness: it is not enough to introduce female characters, but to justify their presence in the narrative plot. Hence, it is necessary to incorporate different looks that reflect the new values of women, beyond labor equality and co-responsibility at home, vindicating others such as flexibility, emotionality or sisterhood, without falling into idealization or into the trap of the ‘superwoman'”. According to Mata, the model of the very “empowered” and “masculinized” woman (in the workplace) is abused, while in household chores and childcare, total co-responsibility is not well represented, but in too many campaigns the man still appears in the role of helping the woman in the home, while she is the one who appears as a prescriber and expert in cleaning products.

” Femvertising is not easy because, first of all, you have to know about feminism,” says Menéndez. “I don’t deny the good intentions of some brands, but their results show that they went off the rails in crafting their proposals. To put it very simply, getting it right means addressing the real needs of women, incorporating authentic personas and motivational slogans, transcending gender roles and aligning all brand policy with the principles of gender equality. And doing so pays off. Surveys indicate that women support brands that embrace femvertising.”

Great (brand) power means great responsibility

Professor Menéndez is optimistic about the relationship between advertising and feminism and even argues that the former can contribute to the advancement of the latter. “Advertising influences people, it proposes models of success and socially desirable values, so it is not irrelevant what message it conveys,” he explains. “If the message is one of autonomy, freedom or life without violence, this will undoubtedly have a positive reading on the part of consumers. If instead of proposing to adorn us with our naked bodies, a bulldozer talks to us face to face, intelligently, without offending or degrading us, it will inevitably be positive. Advertising does not change the world, but it helps us to think about it.

“It is not that brands are asked to champion the feminist cause in a militant and activist way,” acknowledges Mata with respect to the results of her report, “but rather that they contribute their great formative and socializing capacity, showing in their communication models of women, situations and values that reflect real equality. Brands, through their communication and messages, have a great influence and a great responsibility in the evolution and improvement of society, also in the area of women’s equality. This is recognized by the women themselves, who clearly demand that brands use this ‘superpower’ and be mobilizing levers for social transformation”, she concludes.