Why marketing is (still) sexist and how to fix it

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 27/08/2021

Good girl. Girlboss. Flawless model. Perfect mother. Organiser. Wonder Woman. Family rock. Feminist go-getter. Brands profit by telling women who they are and how to be. Now they’ve discovered feminism and are selling “fempowerment” in their advertisements. 

There’s no doubt that these narratives did create some proper forward movement for brands and for women. But behind the go-girl slogans and the viral hashtags has anything really changed? 

Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts left their jobs in advertising almost fifteen years ago because they felt companies marketed to women in a way that was out of step with the way they really were. They attributed this gap between brands that targeted women and the women they were trying to attract, at least in part to the poor representation of women in creative departments and the poor representation of senior women both within agencies and in marketing departments.

“Women still occupy only a third of C-suite positions, despite representing half the population of the industry,” wrote Jane Cunningham in an article.

In their new book ‘Brandsplaining: why marketing is (still) sexist and how to fix it’, Cunningham and Roberts expose the monumental gap that exists between the women we really are and the women that appear in the media around us. Their research reveals how our experiences, wants, and needs – in all forms – are ignored and misrepresented by an industry that fails to understand women.

The two authors propose a radical solution to resolve this once and for all: an innovative framework for marketing that is fresh, exciting, and – at last – sexism-free.