1、Research,Trends and New Visual LanguageGender Bias in Advertising“This Girl Can”campaign from Sport EnglandIn 2017,discussions around gender and media have reached a fever pitch.Following a bruising year at the ballot box,fourth-wave feminism has continued to expand.From the Womens March to high-pro
2、file sexual harassment trials to the increasing number of female protagonists gaining audience recognition in an age of“peak TV,”women are ensuring that their concerns are heard and represented.GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISING2H&M Autumn collection ad 2016Weve seen movements for gender equality in Hollywo
3、od,in Silicon Valleyand even on Madison Avenue.In response to longstanding sexism in advertising,industry leaders such as Madonna Badger are highlighting how objectification of women in advertising can lead to unconscious biases that harm women,girls and society as a whole.Agencies are creating marq
4、uee campaigns to support women and girls.The Always#LikeAGirl campaign,which debuted in 2014,ignited a wave of me-too“femvertising”campaigns:#GirlsCan from Cover Girl,“This Girl Can”from Sport England and the UKs National Lottery,and a spot from H&M that showcased women in all their diversity,set to
5、“Shes a Lady.”Cannes Lions got in on the act in 2015,introducing the Glass Lion:The Lion for Change,an award to honor ad campaigns that address gender inequality or prejudice.But beyond the marquee case studies,is the advertising industry making strides toward improving representation of women overa
6、ll?How do we square the surge in“femvertising”with insights from J.Walter Thompsons Female Tribes initiative,which found in 2016 that,according to 85%of women,the advertising world needs to catch up with the real world?3GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISINGWere finally able to answer these questions with the s
7、ame rigorous,data-driven approach that informs so many other important decisions in advertising.New joint research from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Marys University and J.Walter Thompson New York,funded by Google.org and developed at the University of Southern Califor
8、nias Viterbi School of Engineering,analyzed more than 2,000 English-language films from the Cannes Lions archive to put numbers to the challenge of female representation in advertising,and get a sense of whether the situation is changing.“Technology advances in data sciences and machine learning giv
9、e us new ways of shining light on media content,at scale and with an unprecedented level of detail and accuracy,”says Shri Narayanan,Niki&C.L.Max Nikias Chair in Engineering,University of Southern California.“It can give us novel insights not just by eliminating the mystery about potential unconscio
10、us biases in content,but in offering objective tools to shape content.”TECHNOLOGY REVEALING BIASOr,in the words of Caroline Heldman,research adviser to the Geena Davis Institute and associate professor in the politics department at Occidental College,“more data means more light is shed on the proble
11、m,which inspires more activism around the issue.”“Gender Bias in Advertising”emerges from earlier work by the Geena Davis Institute to create a tool to analyze gender representation in entertainment media.The Geena Davis Institute partnered with the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory(SAIL
12、)at USC and with funding from Google.org to create the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient(GD-IQ),which Heldman describes as“a computer engineering tool that is able to automatically analyze the screen time and speaking time of characters in video down to the millisecond.”Heldman says its the only softwa
13、re in existence specifically developed to collectively analyze gender,screen time and speaking time in media and entertainment content.Apart from automating the task of counting faces and voices,the GD-IQ is able to mark times with much greater precision than human researchers can achieve.“Theres in
14、finite possibility,”says Madeline Di Nonno,CEO of the Geena Davis Institute.“Were excited because it allows us to reveal a level of unconscious bias that isnt possible with the human eye,and its able to go much deeper.GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISING4100607080910111213141516203040506070809010066.133.96733
15、63.936.172.627.468.131.963.136.967.332.763.736.359.840.261.238.863.136.9PercentageYears (2006-2016)LegendFemale CharactersMale CharactersThe research analyzed more than 2,000 Cannes Lions films from 2006 to 2016,focusing on winning and shortlisted entries in the Film and Film Craft categories from f
16、ive English-speaking markets:the US,the UK,Canada,Australia and New Zealand.The sample included ads across 33 different categories,from cosmetics to insurance to social causes.Supporting the automated analysis,the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media research team conducted additional research,i
17、dentifying age,location,objectification,and other personal characteristics associated with prominent characters.This analysis was based on verbal,physical,occupational,and social cues plus other factors.The research found that women consistently accounted for only about one third of all characters i
18、n commercials,across all years tested.In 2006,33.9%of characters were women.Ten years later,the figure had barely budged,reaching only 36.9%.“We assumed that in advertising,given that women dominate purchasing,that commercials would have much greater female representation,”says Di Nonno.“To find out
19、 the reverse was quite surprising.”GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISING:FINDINGSGENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISING5Moreover,when it comes to womens screen time and speaking time in commercials,no statistically significant change has occurred in 10 years.In 2006,43.6%of all commercials featured women on screen for 20%
20、or less of their duration.In 2016,the figure was 44.2%.Ads depicting men only were five times as common as ads depicting women only:25%and 5%of all ads,respectively.Men get about four times as much screen time as women.The study found similar percentages when it comes to speaking time.In 2006,42.3%o
21、f commercials featured women speaking for 20%or less of the time spent on dialogue,compared to 41.7%in 2016.Analyzing the number of utterances,our research counted about three times as many for men as for women.Ads with only male voices were much more common than ads with only female voices,accounti
22、ng for 18%and 3%of ads,respectively.Men speak about seven times more than women.The research also examined the content of speech for men and women in ads.Lines of dialogue spoken by men were about 29%more likely than lines spoken by women to contain words associated with power,and 28%more likely to
23、contain words associated with achievement.The research also measured the dialogues complexity using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.While both genders spoke lines that could be understood by the average fifth grader,womens spoken dialogue was slightly simpler than mens.“What this research shows
24、is that our industry has tent-pole momentsamazing actions or campaigns when we all rally around women,”says Brent Choi,chief creative officer of J.Walter Thompson New York,“but when it comes to creating our regular ads for our regular clients,we forget about them.”Our research focused on analyzing a
25、dvertisements themselves,rather than the industry that produces them.But the experience of the Geena Davis Institute has shown that the systemic problems that produce skewed gender representation cant be solved simply by adding female characters.More info:https:/seejane.org/research-informs-empowers
26、/data“We now know that simply adding women to scripts will not solve gender inequality in entertainment media,”says Heldman.“We have to write female characters with more screen time,more speaking time,more prominence in the storyline,with more personal agency,and without objectifying them.”The Geena
27、 Davis Institutes prior analysis of Hollywood films has also shown that the gender composition of the teams behind them has a powerful effect on how they turn out.“On the film side,we learned that when there was a female writer attached,we saw a 7.5%increase in on-screen roles for women across the 1
28、0 largest film markets,”Di Nonno says.Considering the extremely low percentage of female creative directors in advertising,she adds,the results of the latest study may not be so surprising.6GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISING25%of ads feature men only on screen compared to 5%of ads that featureonly women on
29、screen.There are about twice as many male characters as female characters shown on screen in ads.Measured by speaking time,men had three times as much dialogue as women.85%of women say film and advertising need to catch up to the real world when depicting women.of women switched off films or TV show
30、s if they felt they were negatively stereotyping them.7GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISINGXxxxxxxIn the current feminist moment,people are paying more attention than ever to women working behind the scenes in film,media and photography,and how this ultimately affects these industries output.The most recent e
31、xample is Wonder Woman,which made headlines for taking$103.1 million in its debut weekend in the US alone.It was trailblazing not only for being the first DC/Marvel superhero film to feature a female protagonist(following 19 male-led films since the movie franchise launched in 2008),but also because
32、 its director,Patty Jenkins,is one of only three women to direct a live-action film with a budget of over$100 million.The success of Wonder Woman sparked discussion about the need for more female directors,writers and producers.Fans and critics have also widely recognized how a woman behind the lens
33、 affected important choices and nuances in the movie that were central to its triumph.The Getty Images Lean In Collection,a collection of realistic,authentic images of women and the communities that support them,is in many ways the opposite of a flashy nine-figure Hollywood blockbuster.But its reach
34、 is no less impressive:since launching in 2014,nearly 40,000 images have been downloaded through the collection,while Lean In images have been licensed in more than 95 countries.Wonder Woman 2017WOMEN BEHIND THE SCENES8GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISINGPhotography by Jenna Masoud for MuslimG.Courtesy Getty
35、ImagesGENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISING9Xxxxxxx“Were beginning to understand that its not just about high profile wins,or campaigns,but its about creating a mass volume of images that present positive alternatives and about having a relentless commitment to the normalization of female power in all forums a
36、nd spheres,”says Pam Grossman,director of visual trends at Getty Images.“Its also about representing the nuance of the female gaze,”she continues.“A female director will most likely shoot the same scene in an entirely different way and with a different perspectiveone that takes into account female a
37、mbition,desire,fantasy,agency,not to mention realistic physiology.”Grossman notes that academic concepts such as the“male gaze,”once little-discussed outside liberal arts campuses,are now part of mainstream cultural discourse in a way that seemed unlikely until very recently.Left:Photography by Klau
38、s Vedfelt.Courtesy Getty ImagesRight:Rockie Nolan/Refinery29 for Getty Images10GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISING“In 2016,only 7%of the top films were directed by women.Representation starts with content creators,which is why its so critical to have diversity behind the lens as well as in front of it,”says
39、Piera Gelardi,executive creative director and cofounder of Refinery29.In response,Refinery29 launched Shatterbox Anthology,a film series“working to cultivate and spotlight the voices of women behind the camera,telling stories outside the narrow lens of the overwhelmingly male-dominated industry.”Fil
40、ms supported so far include Kitty,Chlo Sevignys fantastical meditation on childhood;The Tale of Four,a poetic rumination on dignity in crisis by Gabourey Sidibe;Come Swim,a surreal vision by Kristen Stewart;and 50/50,a timely womens rights documentary by Tiffany Shlain.Girlgaze,a project by the Engl
41、ish photographer and media entrepreneur Amanda de Cadenet,bills itself as“the first multimedia platform committed to supporting girls behind the camera.”The project aims to help women break into the photography industry by raising awareness of how women tell visual stories.It features curators inclu
42、ding supermodel Amber Valletta and photographer Inez van Lamsweerde.Contributors include Yara Shahidi,an idol for generation Z,dancer Maddie Ziegler,and TV host Alexa Chung,while a roster of female-identifying photographers rounds out the group.Jamillah by Bree Holt 11GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISINGEmbra
43、ce by Jamie Pearl 12GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISINGXxxxxxxThalia Mavros,founder of media platform The Front,places female ownership at the core of her business model.“Even though we see a huge disparity in ownership,we still had a few potential investors aggressively challenge the importance of investing
44、 in female media entrepreneurs,”says Mavros.“A few heated arguments and door slams later,I am proud to say we are founded and run by women,our investor has a female chief executive at the helm,and even our board of directors is all-female.”Heldman notes that this year the number of female leads in t
45、he top-grossing Hollywood movies broke 30%for the first time since the Geena Davis Institute began measuring the percentage.But she cautions that in Hollywood,even a huge success like Wonder Woman may not be enough to tip the scales in favor of more women-led action films.As in so many other areas,i
46、t will come down to whos making the films.“I think Hollywood could be making a lot more money if they did a better job of telling more and more authentic stories of womens lives,”Heldman says,“but without more women behind the scenes,we wont see more women on the big and little screens.”Grossman agr
47、ees:“Everyone likes great storytelling,and we all empathize with nuanced characters.But were more likely to see that sort of work created about women if it is created by women.”Top left:Photography by Thomas Barwick.Courtesy Getty ImagesBottom left:Photography by Hero Images.Courtesy Getty Images13G
48、ENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISINGMolly Cranna/Refinery29 for Getty ImagesTRENDS14GENDER BIAS IN ADVERTISINGGhostbusters,2016 editionIts no secret that Hollywood has a diversity problem,but the industry may finally be taking steps to address its shortcomings and become more relevant to the women and minority
49、 groups that also buy tickets.And Wonder Woman is only the latest in what looks like a Hollywood sea change.In 2016,a variety of minority-directed movies were critically acclaimed,including Moonlight,a coming-of-age story about a young African-American man,and Fences,starring Denzel Washington.In Ja
50、nuary,The Birth of a Nation,the story of the Nat Turner rebellion,smashed Sundance records when Fox Searchlight bought it for$17.5 million.2016 also saw advances for women in lead roles.There was a female-led Ghostbusters reboot,and women will also front the upcoming Oceans Eleven spin-off,while 201
