Some men don’t know when they’re being sexual predators and that’s a large problem for women. For instance, 86% of Brazilian women have been harassed in nightclubs. Yet, men in Brazil have a hard time recognizing much less owning and correcting the problem.
To showcase the problem and to help educate unconscious males, Ogilvy Brazil and Schweppes made a dress with sensors in it that register how many times the woman wearing it is touched.
This is wearable technology put to the ultimate test—tracking sexual harassment in a crowded nightclub in real time. The results are not pretty.
In less than four hours, the three women who agreed to wear the specially-made dresses and go into the nightclub setting were touched a total of 157 times or more than 40 times per hour.
“A woman is not an animal to be cornered, or to be captured.” I love that Schweppes is taking this issue on.
“Character required” is the Schweppes’ tagline in Brazil. This is a brand that requires a healthy nightlife scene to propel and sustain its sales, so the advocacy perfectly fits the brand. There’s also a degree of responsibility taken here, for gin and tonics and vodka sodas (presumably made with Schweppes) may have a role in spurring on this bad behavior.
No Escape from the Perv Plex
In related news, women are also finding it difficult to have a nice time at music festivals, on airplanes and in college (to name a few high profile places where women are routinely harassed or worse).
…this year’s Coachella experience was full of moments I never saw on Instagram: being repeatedly violated by strangers. In the three days I was at Coachella, I only spent a total of 10 hours at the actual festival, where I watched numerous performances and interviewed festivalgoers about their experience with sexual assault and harassment for Teen Vogue. During the 10 hours I was reporting on this story, I was groped 22 times.
Then there’s the matter of working in the ad agency business, a notorious Boy’s Club. Publicis India and DDB Mudra have recently been in the news for employing sexual predators in managerial posts.
One female victim who detailed her experience at a leading digital agency notes that there was a “trend of sexualizing women” at the agency. “Our physical appearance was currency and our attractiveness or the perceived lack of it could decide our value in this company. I know of women who were asked if they were wearing tight clothing because they had a client meeting,” she writes.
