Can we, the people, shop our way to social change? Definitely not.
Can we favor manufacturers and retailers that explicitly appeal to our values? Naturally.
This December 4th, ChooseWOMEN, an international platform piloted by Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization, is asking for a focus on the female. “Choose Women Wednesday” invites everyone to shop at women-owned businesses, read books by female authors, listen to female musicians, and promote and mentor women in an effort to close the gender gap once and for all.
The spot from BBH NY makes good use of meditation stones to tell a new story. In this new story, women have been meditating long enough.
Choose To Respect, Promote and Pay Women—No Special Day Needed
Diversity and inclusion in the advertising industry is a massive problem. Last April, The Guardian reported devastating pay gap numbers, among other gender-related atrocities.
In 2018, the worst gender pay gap in the industry was 44.7% at JWT. At AMV BBDO, whose CEO was then a woman, Cilla Snowball, it was 37.5. At adam&eveDDB, an agency also run by a woman, Tammy Einav, the gap was 34.2%.
Across the industry, just 29% of staff are women, and they tend to rise only so far. Women account for only 12% of creative directors, often among the most highly paid roles in an agency.
I admit it’s hard for me as a man to understand why women continue to show up at work five days a week. They’re clearly not being paid to do so. To me, unequal pay is one of the worst forms of sexual harassment.
Cindy Gallop, formerly of BBH, believes that sexual harassment is “systemic” in advertising and that it is the single biggest brake on female success: “It manages women out, destroys ambitions, derails careers, crushes dreams.” She’s right and right to say it loudly.
A survey of 3,500 advertising employees carried out by the #timeTo initiative found that 34% of women questioned had been harassed, the majority of them more than once. A quarter of the sample had been harassed six times or more.
I wonder how many men working in advertising are abusers? And how many men know an abuser and look the other way? Maybe the better question is how many of us don’t know an abuser of women in the workplace?
