The average Australian sees 5,000 adverts a day, so it’s hard to overestimate the power they have to influence views, says Dianne Hill, CEO of Women’s Health Victoria.
Her organisation is leading the Australian advertising equality movement, shEqual.
“It’s vital for the health and wellbeing of women that ads don’t reinforce harmful expectations and social norms,” she says.
“A good starting point is removing caricatures of women in advertising and replacing them with more realistic and diverse representations of women.”
To help advertisers discuss the depiction of women shEqual has launched a new resource to help creatives, strategists, and brands identify and erase problematic stereotypes.
The guide, Female Stereotypes in Advertising, lays out some common stereotypes currently in use in advertising and the real-world harm these shallow depictions can have.
The purpose for the guide, along with upcoming video and social content created by Icon Agency, is to drive conversations about the representation of women in creative content.
The report highlights seven stereotypes:
● The Model Mother: Women are disproportionately shown as the primary caretakers of both home and children - caring, dressing, cooking and cleaning.
● The Passive Little Girl: Ads show boys engaging in active play and girls sitting passively, often with one another, playing with dolls and house appliances and everything is pink.
● The Observed Woman: The observed woman loses her agency and authority in the male gaze.
● The Sexualised Woman: This stereotype demonstrates that a woman’s value comes only from her sex appeal.
● The Pretty Face: This stereotype can be more subtle but shows women as secondary and “just a pretty face” without much intelligence or independence.
● The Magical Grandmother: Older women are generally missing from ads, but when they are shown they are often in the kitchen serving food, smiling and supporting younger characters, with few spoken lines.
● The Ticked Box: Characters included to check diversity boxes, but commonly limited to the background.
Many other women were broadly absent from ads, including women with disabilities, women with larger bodies, queer women, older women, and women of colour – especially First Nations women.
shEqual warns that the pervasiveness of shallow stereotypes in Australian advertising has damaging real world effects – and their work is supported by United Nations research that shows that gender stereotypes can perpetuate inequality and limit women’s autonomy and freedom.
“Sexist ads fuel a culture of gender inequity that perpetuates violence against women, with one in three reporting having experienced physical or sexual violence,” says Hill.
“Our data shows that two-thirds* of the industry agree that gender stereotypes are a contributing factor to this issue. It’s time that these demeaning conventions are dispelled to help prevent further harm to women.”
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