Sexism in Advertisng

Sexism's prominent existence in the advertising industry has caused the outrage of many parties, particularly the feminists. Almost all advertisements contain at least a mild sense of sexism or gender discrimination. For example- father coming back from work, mother cooking dinner in the kitchen for the family, and et cetera. The extreme showcase of sexism in advertisements has its own function in marketting as well. The advertisers usually do not directly emphasize sexism itself in the advertisement but rather indirectly connote its underlined representation in the name of selling the product (Cohen-Eliya & Hammer, 2004). Sexism, or the other gender stereotypes showcased in these advertisements were initially meant to be of humorous purposes. The WKD Original Vodka company has launched a big advertising campaign during the World Cup season in which their advertisements comprised of sexual discrimination contents, that were intended to be funny to the audience (Perera, 2010).

One of the WKD advertisements that has caused the sexism controversy


Video description: A wife doing house chores (dishes, laundry, trash) while the husband watches football on the televsion. Husband calls out to old mother's help for his wife in the kitchen, while the mother is washing her son's van.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGCax1MQi_Q



Caption: A femininity feedback from an online discussion blog, refering to the caption of the WKD advertisement "Have you got a WKD side?" .
Source: http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/03/boys_boys_boys#top


Despite these sexist remarks laid down by advertising companies, their main goal of publicizing the product is still reached. According to an AC Nielson's statistical research, the advertised WKD beverages has surged in a short amount of time and became the no. 1 ready-to-drink brand during their sales period (BeverageBrands, 2006).

The issue here is that how has sexism become a part of the advertising trend. Are the advertisers aware of the severity of the issue? Is it commercially ethical to produce such advertisements that can cause offence to the society in terms of sexual orientation abuse?

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has set up a particular sets of codes to regulate the the contents of the advertisements. The Section 4 of the CAP codes shows that any type of marketing communications must not contain elements that could cause offence to the people (Committee of Advertising Practice, 2009). Disrupting sexual orientation is one of the elements. Sexism in advertising is often fought back by terms like democracy or freedom of speech. This phenomenon (voicing out against sexism) is contracting the democratic stance of the citizens in the society (Cohen-Eliya & Hammer, 2004). Afterall it is just the matter of how you define the sexism standard in your society.

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References
Beverage Brands, 2006, WKD surges to become no 1 RTD brand, beverage-brands.co.uk, viewed 13rd November 2010,
http://www.beverage-brands.co.uk/news/NewsArticle.aspx?id=47&action=archive.

Cohen-Eliya, M, Hammer, Y 2004, Advertisements, stereotypes, and freedom of expression, Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 165-187, viewed 13rd November 2010, http://web.ebscohost.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&hid=110&sid=53cb7637-1782-473c-9e73-81b29ccb2c36%40sessionmgr114.

Committee of advertising practice, 2009, CAP code pdf versions, bcap.org.uk, viewed 13rd November 2010, http://bcap.org.uk/The-Codes/CAP-Code/CAP-Code-pdf-versions.aspx.

Perera, K 2010, Time to kick sexism out of advertising, guardian.co.uk, viewed 13rd November 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/29/kick-sexism-out-of-advertising#history-link-box#history-link-box.