‘Troubling sexism’ in the Australian advertising industry a biased study says Anne Miles
By Anne Miles, founder, Suits&Sneakers
As a multi-disciplinary marketing strategist having been through hell and back in this wild industry of ours I have a unique place where I now specialise in removing harmful stereotypes from media, marketing and advertising. Harmful stereotypes are now proven to be linked with domestic violence, bullying and mental health problems. As a survivor of abuse and discrimination at work and at home I care deeper than most about this topic and study it internationally. I’m an activist for gender rights as much as the next person but the recent study by Women’s Health Victoria (WHV) and campaigning through #shEqual is biased and flawed research, and will surely fail us all.
Before you slam me for being anti-feminist just remember that I have experienced domestic and workplace abuse first-hand and know personally the impact of being forced into stereotypical boxes that don’t fit. I have since broken out and living my own version of life, but I am now determined to have impact in government policy, law reform, self-regulation systems, and re-educating the media, marketing and advertising industries and seek equality for all. That definitely means we need women to be treated like equals (when we are not), and like WHV and the #shEqual crew we have the same ultimate objective. In my view they’re just not going about it the right way and have lost sight of basic marketing principles in the process and have no clue how to convert an audience for behaviour change today (not yesterday).
On top of that the research study conducted by Empirica Research shows us that the industry cares deeply about this topic. Great! We’re on the same page. My concern is that the research study published and the insights shared specifically from this by WHV will do more harm to the media industry than good, and I question the research approach for having inherent bias in place (note that this is a fault of the brief and the industry’s engrained bias more so than the researcher’s approach). If we look to validate an opinion we already hold, then it is biased from the outset.
I am very much a strategist who relies on data and market insights and do not just follow old habits and stereotypes that I think are, ironically, driving Women’s Health Victoria. I define this overcompensation on diversity topics across the board as ‘Diversity Oversteer’.
I propose that the WHV study is so engrained with bias and dredging up old issues without helpful solutions to fix the issues, that it is perpetuating an ongoing problem where women are harmed, where women are not able to achieve their full potential in our industry, and men are disarmed to take action.
Well-meaning communities are fighting for women’s rights but inadvertently doing more harm as a general trend. We need a totally new approach to fight gender rights and we need to be fighting for everyone’s rights and extend to race, age, where people live including the bias between rural and urban communities, socio-economic bias, abilities and life stages, sexuality and also neuro-diversity too. We’re failing in all these areas as a society and the media, marketing and advertising community is perpetuating it harmfully. It is now proven we are going backwards and feminist activism and campaigns like #shEqual are ineffective. I can’t see any evidence of success from #shEqual and challenge them to demonstrate positive impact or get out. I can’t see any evidence yet, and I live and breathe this stuff.
The UK has given us a good precedence to move forward from and have made the depiction of harmful stereotypes against the law and enforceable through the self- regulation system. That is true effectiveness. Australia’s laws are not linking well between each other and also the self-regulation system is blocking the laws being upheld too. Until that’s done the rest will be pointless.
The Advertising Standards Board recently upgraded their regulations to take sexualisation out of the media as a self-regulated system which is a small step forward, but it still remains with repeat offending brands and the general public lacking faith in the system.
Reports like this are a waste of time, putting more barriers to change in place and polarising communities. We need a bigger focus on a failing system from government, industry, and the individual organisations who make up the marketing, media and advertising industries. Many agencies want to do the right thing and countless individuals within them too, but the wider industry are disempowered by studies like this and don’t have actionable micro-steps in the marketing process to make change.
The bias to females in the survey results is not indicative of even getting close to true inclusion in our industry where the management positions are still mostly held by men and the pay gap remains. Purely citing percentages of population is a very limited way of measuring inclusion and reporting on impact.
WHV lost all credibility with me in the past when their past research team who began the journey of researching our industry was quick to want to discredit other important research studies I cited, without even validating the work and taking on valuable independent strategic learnings. The research representative said to me, in front of a boardroom of industry professionals, that they wanted to see the research so they
could ‘Blow that shit up!’. That is hardly a professional and objective point of view to be running an important study that I think is now causing harm to our industry and sending good work on diversity and inclusion backwards.
Likewise the agency teams supporting WHV were hellbent on repeating feminist campaigning strategies from the past and even the name of the movement has female bias in place by calling it #shEqual. I believe this campaign is talking to an already converted audience and will be ineffective and polarising further.
One good thing about the study that really could have been more helpful is the validation that we all want the same objective and outcome achieve – we want equality and we want the system fixed. But we need to look at this as a brand strategy problem and not a historical record just validating a belief already in place. We need a ‘go to market’ strategy and move away from blame of our men. In my experience with the work that I do, I can clearly see that the bias against women is often perpetuated often by both men and women and is not a ‘man vs woman’ issue at all. It is a systemic and operational issue, much bigger than that.
This is a huge issue for Australia’s society and we could really improve the growing domestic violence numbers and mental health problems for people of all genders and backgrounds. The media industries cannot be trusted to run this on their own now, and this WHV report and #ShEqual campaign is the nail in coffin of proof of that now, in my view. We need a government intervention immediately as the industry well- meaning few need to let go of the past and rebuild an equal future for all our workers and consumers and stop complaining and ‘man bashing’.
Anne Miles is founder of Suits&Sneakers which was built to be a more inclusive community of pre-approved topic industry talent. Anne is a speaker and trainer on removing harmful stereotypes from the media, marketing and advertising industries. Anne is also host of Suits&SneakersTV which is a platform to re-educate the industry on conscious marketing practices. More at https://annemiles.com.au/ or https://suitsandsneakers.global
22 Comments
Couldn’t agree more. Thought the framing of the Shequal survey was embarrassingly leading and was never going to get to the core issues. Seemed like the whole process was designed to get soundbites that would continue the same outdated conversation.
Thank you for writing this and being brave enough to publish it, Anne. The methodology, report, and conclusions were and are hilariously transparent with their bias.
Who would have thought…
Thanks Anne. You’ve spoken on this issue and been more committed to righting the wrongs of entrenched stereotypes for longer than most.
You’re right – sound bites and tokenism have achieved nothing in the past. Our industry must stop looking back if it is to create a future focussed framework to deliver the outcomes we all know are fair, but been denied to too many for far too long.
Thanks so much to the supporters who care about effective change. The phone has been running hot too today and I am grateful. This is the year we make an impact! It is clear we all want it and most just don’t know how.
I didn’t mention before but I have started a petition to get Government intervention in the changes in the laws and also an enquiry into what needs to be done in the self-regulation system. Any signatures will help:
https://chng.it/qwCqPh4Y
Thanks sincerely. Anne
The WHV report includes MULTIPLE REAL-WORLD examples of sexist and discriminatory behaviours that have happened to women in the workplace. All diversity and inclusion work helps to change things for the better. This report was not a diversity oversteer, it’s a report summarising the harmful attitudes, beliefs, and actions that exist in our industry and underpin gender inequality – the very thing which has been PROVEN to LEAD to all violence against women.
No one is disagreeing with the truthfulness of the responses you received. And I’m sure the stories are horrifying and of an incredibly serious and criminal nature and it absolutely needs to be stamped out, addressed and resolved – and the industry does desperately need to look at itself and drive action in fixing these things.
But – a key issue here is ‘what was your selection criteria to ensure that the sample was statistically significant, not biased and an accurate reflection of the industry’s attitudes towards sexism’ for your key findings to be factual.
Calling this survey #shEqual – in and of itself is an open bias towards what you were hoping to find in the results. It would also have immediately grabbed the people most passionate about this issue to participate. And the people who are most passionate about this are people who have been seriously affected by the issue, both men and women, for many varied reasons – and that in of itself is a bias sample if you don’t ensure you check for that. Or at least splitting out your findings based on those identified bias’ – eg. people who’ve self-identified as ‘having witnessed / been a victim / never witnessed’ and applying that psychographic breakdown to your survey to try to eliminate some bias or at least account for it.
And some of the questions in the survey were assumptive – “In order to support gender equality, how important do you believe it is that advertising…” then you have the actual questions – That lead up is biased as it is immediately assuming Gender Equality is something that requires support and action in all advertising.
Do 10% of men, and 5% of women believe that woman shouldn’t be portrayed respectfully in advertising, OR does that % of people think gender inequality is not be something that needs to be portrayed in advertising, or do you mean the advertising industry ???
The finding from the above was that women in the industry are more concerned about gender equality in Australian advertising than men.
But to not eliminate the bias of the lead up to this immediately makes your data inaccurate at best.
Based on your survey – 1 in 10 men in the advertising industry believe advertising should not portray respectful depictions of women. – that’s a pretty horrifying statistic if true. And one that I’m sure many will believe and get really angry and disgusted by.
But 1 in 20 women in the advertising industry also believe that advertising should not portray respectful depictions of women either? – That’s a statistic that immediately screams BS.
5% of all women in our industry think that we should have disrespectful depictions of women instead of respectful ones? Really? You saw that statistic and didn’t think that’s weird and worth investigating into what’s going on there, and why that isn’t 99%?
That in and of itself is a giant red flag to how you’ve conducted this survey. And to state your findings as fact and as a national representation is really damaging to what you yourselves are wanting to achieve.
Anne Miles is probably the most outspoken and impactful woman in the Australian industry to push for gender equality and drive change in our industry. You should listen to what she’s saying.
I have a friend
Stop bashing us fragile white men who exponentially benefit from sexism the moment we enter the industry – and then go on to perpetuate it.
Glad someone’s looking out for us.
Yeah the boys.
“All diversity and inclusion work helps to change things for the better.” That’s like saying all vaccination campaigns work. As well meaning as they are, they simply don’t. Anne hits the nail with precision, “equality as a unified mission”.
Well said, Anne.
So often we see the equality movement hijacked and damaged by people with another agenda. Equality is not pro-woman, nor pro-man. It is, funnily enough, exactly as the name suggests.
Often, we see people with solutions that only serve to highlight the difference in gender rather than make it invisible (yes, I’m talking to you, all the people who use rubbish terms like ‘She-E-O’, Mumpreneur, and so forth). These terms only serve to create difference and/or division, which is what we are trying to fix.
Just yesterday, I saw a post where a woman was trying to attach gender to the ageism issue in our industry. The ageism in our industry is a problem for both sexes, but of course I didn’t dare point that out, less I be crucified for pointing out a fact that didn’t fit with ‘the cause’ as she sees it.
For equality to be successful, it needs to build from a place of fact and logic, rather than emotion and biased rhetoric.
I understand the emotion and the anger, due to the inequality of the past and that which still exists, but if we use that to try and drive the change, we’ll miss the mark.
Someone is going hard on flooding this comment section with their own bias.
Gutsy AF, Anne. Thanks for taking the time to write this. I’d really just glanced at the research and taken it at face value (I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a big thinker when it comes to this kind of thing). This was so insightful to me:
“I can clearly see that the bias against women is often perpetuated often by both men and women and is not a ‘man vs woman’ issue at all. It is a systemic and operational issue, much bigger than that.”
Thank you.
If sexism is rife in the industry – it comes from the top. It does not come from the bottom. And the industry is run on the people at the bottom. The workers, the passionate people who just want to do good work, win awards, win clients and have fun with colleagues and friends.
Why don’t you have the balls to name names, take them to court, and get the fuck on with it.
We support you. Nobody likes sexism. Nobody.
I also have to agree.
In my own personal experience with marcomms and or media/ad managers, female or male, I’ve noticed that the trend is to carry a toxic attitude toward business developed from the influence of neo-liberal executive culture, rather than as a result of gender fuelled discrimination.
Why? The only real example anyone has to follow as an executive within Australia are the articles American’s have produced in HBR or HuffPost, and or the pretty well f*cked experience of an entire class of rich and white tattersalls members.
In fact, the most egregious instances of workplace bullying, illegal performance management of people in place of fair redundancy, gaslighting, or corporate theft that I’ve seen, has been facilitated by women, either self directed, or under the advice and direction of both women and man alike.
The point is that, it’s not a gender that keeps you from making dodgy decisions. It’s what’s considered normal behaviour in the culture you occupy, and what’s expected of you as an effective business person as the determinant. Decision tree’s will ostensibly deviate from whether or not your actions will be celebrated by your share holders, peers, or partners, rather than what is morally or ethically the right thing to do.
It makes perfect sense. Money is and always will be the motivational factor. It is business after-all, and the aim of business is profit maximisation. Exploitation makes money, and in this business culture it is celebrated. In fact, even morally and or ethically, money has been proven to corrupt. Researchers have shown time and again that the more money you make, the less empathy you feel for others.
Trickling women into big money job’s by closing supposed executive pay gaps, or through executive team quota’s, or otherwise, serves no one, really. What’s needed is a rapid redevelopment and rethinking of the system to make money in marketing and advertising, that puts ethics at the core of profit maximisation, instead of the other way around.
One only has to look recently at the corporate theft and wealth handover by our elected neo-liberal leaders, and their advice and unwillingness to do anything about it in politics to understand the real imbalance here. Advice that earnestly came from the same private consultancy sector that is starting to buy up, and filter through our industries’ holding companies.
So what’s the answer, then?
First; Stop hiring business people to exist in your creative businesses. There’ll be no revolution as a result of those following the lessons of MBA’s, Finance Controllers, and or Operations Officers. These people have learned to play and to optimise a crooked game. A game that they don’t wish to leave, and won’t.
Second; Forget wasting time on the research studies that are skimmed and ignored by the people who benefit from them not existing, and who hold the power. Instead, form groups at the bottom of the pile comprised of creative people who aren’t yet cuffed to the self interest of maintaining and climbing through this status quo system. You’ll only ever find revolution through young creative people, who are experiencing the discrimination and or exploitation of these systems, and so have the empathy, motivation and courage to depart from, to disrupt, and to risk not much fostering the exponential benefits of change.
Really love the discussion here @Looking from the bottom, up and the concept of the ‘bottom up’ approach. I do agree that movement from the bottom is useful and some training programs I have for agencies and clients does deliver on that. But, from my experience, even with this training across all staff and the team workshopping the entire workflow process to reinvent it, if top management are not doing their bit and the workflow and approval chain isn’t changed then the people at the bottom just get more frustrated and either give up or leave. Likewise the other common block is agencies who think it is their job just to do what is briefed to them by the client including inheriting a biased strategy and media plan.
I’ve experienced well-meaning people thinking they’re doing great, but they really are not. On that note… FYI – saying that “You’ll only ever find revolution through young creative people,” is actually discriminatory too. You are being ageist. Just so you know.
Here is a great discussion on the topic of ageism in the industry that you may enjoy: https://www.suitsandsneakers.tv/episode/ageism/
Thanks for being passionate and I trust you’ll dig further into this topic and become a voice for FULL inclusion across gender and age, plus many of the other characteristics that are forgotten too.
Thanks for the passion and good discussion. Anne
Thanks for reading, and a considered response.
In my own defence, (and I appreciate you calling the ageism out) the point I was making about age was rather an inarticulate point about circumstance and motivation.
To your point, and from your experience, if the top are doing nothing, nothing changes. It’s precisely the ‘doing nothing’ that points to the theory that the older you get, the less power you wield over change. Why? The older you get, the stronger the felt perception of risk becomes. Risk in losing either the little power you’ve painfully gained over time in a rigged system, or perhaps even your livelihood as a result of potential power redistribution. Meaning that, you won’t risk anything. This is arguably a bigger barrier to someone who has responsibility to partners, children, family, equity (represented as a more common scenario within older working demographics) than it is to someone with all the time in the world, and nothing to lose. You Anne, are in a privileged position, working from outside of the agency to make change through training within, but sadly I feel like this is a fools errand (I’m not aiming to be dismissive here, it’s only my perception.)
Which is why, I cynically hold more hope in younger people to enact change. They, through only small experience have identified their bosses as not very aspirational, and are looking to opt out of their example by starting new businesses of their own (just look at the amount of creatives who made beer companies last year). It’s within these new environments that I personally see ethical creative and media company models that can compete. Because, sadly and somewhat ironically, its legacy agencies’ own developed culture of ageism that will give these younger people in business a competitive advantage. For year’s agencies have claimed that ‘a finger on the pulse is a finger on the money’. Though today, there’s simply no incentive for young people to be that finger on the pulse for agencies. No one want’s to reform the crooked holding companies, and no one wants to turn an ageing CEO’s rudder for them, left only to be exploited.
Finally, it’s also my observation that ageism is a massive contributing factor as to why Agencies have been so obviously desperate to emulate private consultancy. In those environments, age is rewarded monetarily and there’s clear and present safety in the entrenched power of partnership arrangements and dodgy relationships that even youngest of guns can’t crack. It’s an ivory tower that promises wealth, and is a model that promises cheap labour. Unfortunately, unlike accounting or IT project rollouts, there’s no one who want’s to pay for it.
Great points by both of you, including yours Anne. Ageism is also rife. It’s either unconscious, conscious, or generalisation bias. In every industry, there are young and old who are great performers, and young and old who are under performers. It should always come down to the individual, but sadly we look for the shiny new thing. And sometimes (run by the beancounters) it’s because we can pay less. Sometimes. We are still one of the only craft-based industries that toss out older people. It’s sad to watch. It’s a joke, really. Apologies for going off topic.
Hi Anne,
I really admire the passion you have for this topic.
However, I think you’re jumping the gun on some of your criticisms of the survey – the snapshots and social posts of key results don’t reflect the entirety of the survey, nor do they reflect the scope (598 participants, 41% of which were male).
WHV will be making the full survey questionnaire available soon and at that point I’d love for you to have a detailed look at it so that you can see what we covered and how the questions were actually phrased. But I can assure you that the questions weren’t biased and the wording wasn’t leading. Furthermore, there were many questions asking about possible solutions and strategies – including government regulation of ad content that you mentioned.
I would be more than happy to talk to you about the survey design and structure if you would like? Please feel free to get in touch.
Cassie Hayward, PhD
Managing Director of Empirica Research
Thank for responding @Cassie Hayward. I would love to talk more about this and see how we can use the information to do more good rather than harm when you have the full survey questions available for review. anne@suitsandsneakers.global
However, if you read carefully, I didn’t question the study methodology or accuracy – just the initial brief and what has been done with the data. Also repeating a study that we already knew the answers for. There have been plenty, the most notable and recent I suggest is this:
https://adassoc.org.uk/all-in-hub/ (with a good ‘action plan’).
By looking at past experiences and shaming the population as a whole – that is the harm with this. The focus is on the wrong things now. We already knew most of the findings and I propose that repeating it is causing harm. A retrospective approach and outing the negative perspective and then taking those findings to the outside world with a feminine bias and outdated marketing campaign approach is the problem. I don’t think that my POV is going to change even if you try and prove the actual research methodology was sound.
I’d certainly love to be involved in any pro-active action that will actually make change though, without man-bashing and pulling the entire community down. We also don’t know how many perpetrators are actually doing the harm across the many businesses and over how many years, and without data or the ability to lift NDA’s protecting perpetrators we may not know.
It is like comparing to the gaming industry and saying that every consumer who plays games are addicted or at risk of harm when only 3-4% have reported addiction issues, for example and there are equally reported benefits. That’s actually 96-97% who do NOT have addiction to gaming but the media and activists often focus on the negative to sensationalise the problem (which, yes, is a problem for 3-4%). This is how harmful stereotypes grab hold.
Focusing on the negative sets up social proof and makes others assume things that are not true and sensationalises a problem that compounds and keeps being engrained by the appearance of a precedence. The entire ad industry is NOT doing harm on this topic and we’re beyond needing to hear about the problems without any good focus on the solutions nor to inspire the people doing good (or sitting on the fence) to stand up bravely.
The problems are more systemic than workplace HR issues day to day and I do realise that WHV is doing work with government advocacy too, which is great, but none of us are effective on that yet and any activism spent on a feminist campaigning would be better spent getting change by rallying the entire community in advertising and marketing together to call on the government to make legal and self-regulatory changes with an equal voice, rather than shaming our people (men mostly).
I hope that out of this someone funds a project to research what the industry DOES need to do in order to be effective and validate my concerns and the other evidence presented that these feminist approaches are failing badly and now doing more harm than good. What about sharing examples and role modelling by those setting wonderful precedence? Now THAT is a more useful study.
I do believe that a more equality focused research project attached with an intention for some very strategic outcomes is planned by the ACA here:
https://advertisingcouncil.org.au/resources/create-space/ This seems a far more robust, unbiased and useful approach including research, rather than bashing men and making us all feel it is a useless and hopeless situation.
My position is unlikely to change on this study, all the same. Feel comfortable that the specific methodology according to the brief is not the concern and the researchers are off the hook. Let’s see if someone can fund a research project and strategic campaign that will actually have effect. Please.
Ladies how about you speak directly and off line rather than through these open comments.
From my observation women in the industry have usually caused more harm to each other than what caused by males.
Already offline, thanks @confused, but the responses are for everyone’s benefit on this thread. No point leaving an accusation without a response because silence condones them.
On that topic – Interesting that you have a belief that more women cause harm to each other than from males…. Once you have a belief on board you can keep finding evidence of that which isn’t necessarily fact. It is certainly not a gender based concern here at all about that part of the research. The specific study and my concerns about dredging up negativity is nothing to do with anyone of any gender at this part of the discussion, and assigning gender to a genderless process is quite out of line.
Calling us ‘Ladies’ like that and reverting this to a gender debate isn’t a healthy approach and likely buying into stereotypes that women are more emotional than men – which has been scientifically proven false. Just saying…
See how the industry has SO much bias and ingrained stereotypes even in this thread of a handful of representatives who even care about the topic? We’ve had ageism and gender bias against women at least here in under a dozen participants – that’s 16.7% of the responses that are potentially harmful. Something really does need to be done that actually teaches people.