Former British MP Douglas Carswell: “Why has the Advertising Standards Authority banned a VW ad for showing a woman with a pram?”
A Volkswagen ad in the UK has been banned due to “gender stereotypes in advertising”, and former British MP Douglas Carswell, in the video above, wonders why the regulator is insisting only woke ads can go to air. And from an Australian perspective, with the AANA launching an updated Code of Ethics Practice Note in July, is the same degree of wokeness about to happen here?
Background: According to an article from CNN Business, the ad for Volkswagen was investigated by the UK Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) after viewers complained they perpetuated gender stereotypes.
The article states: New rules that came into force in June prohibit depictions of gender that “are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offense.
The Volkswagen commercial shows a number of primarily male people taking part in adventurous activities – two male astronauts in space, and a male athlete with a prosthetic leg doing long jump – before cutting to a mother sitting on a park bench next to a stroller. It prompted three complaints from viewers, and the ASA found it showed a woman “engaged in a stereotypical care-giving role.”
“We acknowledged that becoming a parent was a life-changing experience that required significant adaptation, but taking care of children was a role that was stereotypically associated with women,” the body added in its ruling.” Continue reading on CNN Business…
14 Comments
The planners have taken over the hen house…
It should be banned because it’s a shit ad not because of a mum working mum on maternity leave.
Serious question: in situations like this when people make official complaints about such innocuous stuff, is it because they are in some way involved with a competitor? Like, were the complaints made by people who work for BMW or Audi, for example?
Carswell does his argument no favours by selectively oversimplifying the issue. It is not that a woman is depicted with a pram, but that this shot comes after two shots of men in far more ‘heroic’ and active roles – an astronaut and an athlete. Context is key.
You can readily mount an argument that the ad should not be banned for the depiction, but to take the shot out of context and suggest that all mothers with prams will be banned from ads is as much of an over-reach as the hammer-and-sickle Euro flag Carswell has in the background of his video.
And really, how hard would it have been to show a female astronaut anyway?
You progressives should start your own vanilla society. Ask yourself this question … “Do I have it harder than my parents and grandparents have?”.
Try getting out of that ad life of yours and see the real world! It ain’t all rosy.
You wouldn’t hear a single bloke complaining if this was instead showing a fella kicking a footy with their son or daughter, attempting to do their daughters hair in the morning or having an difficult time changing a nappy.. Which are arguably male stereotypes, on account of them being both generally and statistically factually accurate..
Let’s pretend women aren’t the ones that give birth and get the lions share of parental leave, which subsequently means that on average they spend the most time with the children and are therefore more likely to be seen in public with a child & pram, shall we? This is spot is merely reflective of the world outside your door.. It isn’t propagating a harmful stereotype, this is both biology and a statistical inevitability.
The Volkswagen ad critique by Carswell is ridiculously oversimplified, and all it serves to do is rile up the anti-equality squad. Dog whistling at its finest.
hehe look mum i learned a new buzzword
now everyone’s opinion can be wrong 🙂
My wife was a producer of animation and an experienced photographic library curator. Yet, she wanted nothing more than to be a mum and valued that above anything else. Therefore, in IMHO, it is the critics who’ve placed a higher value on the male roles in the VW ad., not the vast majority of males or females who view ‘being a mum’ a more noble [and more difficult] a role as that of any astronaut, or athlete.
just a ploy to get people to talk and watch the commercial.
#WhoFuckingCares #WFC
Apocalypse NOW!
Please.
that everyone would just fucking fuck the fuck off.
Stupid fucking world.
“You progressives” is how you “virtue signal” to other backward ignoramus’