Contagion’s Dean Taylor reckons it’s time for advertising to catch up with the men and women who have been marching around the world.
Getty’s latest edition of Creative in Focus, a lookbook for the photography industry and a guide to the changing realm of visual culture, sees the breakdown of gender roles, profiling of positive leaders of industry, and a lust for the amazing things our Earth has to offer as the key trends of 2015.
Gender stereotypes in advertising are often inaccurate and outdated. But the real issue is that they’re ineffective, writes Lucinda Sherborne.
A number of recent studies show women in New Zealand are paid on average ten percent less for doing the same job as men—and the pay gap is widening. To draw attention to this inequality—and hopefully grease the wheels of new legislation to better address the issue—the YWCA Auckland and DDB NZ have decided to turn the tables and, through TV, print, online and experiential, including male-only surcharges at coffee carts and sausage sizzles, show men how absurd it is for the two genders to be treated differently when it comes to money. Plus: ASB’s Barbara Chapman on the glass ceiling.
This weekend my mailbox was inundated with catalogues from big retailers telling me about their current toy sale. Apparently ‘tis the season. As I flicked through one of the catalogues I began to notice just how gender-specific it was. In the “play and pretend” section (it is a sea of pink) there are little girls playing with Barbie glam pools and day spas, or wheeling around a shopping trolley (with food no less). Or, they can take their pick from one of the kitchen, supermarket, pots and pans or laundry playsets. Flick a few more pages, and you’ll find the pink ‘craft and creativity’ section, or the blue ‘action and adventure’ section. You get the picture.