The Unstereotype Alliance Celebrates Two Years of Collaboration Towards Creating an Unstereotyped World

The Unstereotype Alliance Celebrates Two Years of Collaboration

Towards Creating an Unstereotyped World

UN Women scales up the Unstereotype Alliance responding to the urgent global need to eradicate stereotypes and a renewed push for gender equality

CANNES, FRANCE, 17 June, 2019 – A Gender Equality Attitudes study conducted by UN Women, in partnership with Kantar, across 10 countries found that one in four men think it is okay to hit their spouse and one-third of the population feels that when a woman works for pay, the children suffer. The findings of the pilot study demonstrate the widening of the gender equality gap and UN Women believes that without changing the harmful attitudes towards women and girls, no amount of access to education, finance or infrastructure can help bridge the gap. Often times, societal attitudes are shaped by content produced in the media and now more than ever there is an urgent need for the advertising industry to come together with the Unstereotype Alliance.

Started in 2017, the Unstereotype Alliance was convened by UN Women to bring together a powerful and growing global coalition of leading industry players behind the common goal of eliminating gender bias and harmful gender stereotypes from their advertising. Over the past two years, the Unstereotype Alliance has made tremendous strides in inspiring partners to collectively create an unstereotyped world.

In collaboration with Cannes Lions, new "Unstereotype Criteria" have now been introduced to urge all jury members to consider whether the work perpetuates negative stereotypes and inequalities. Specifically, how gender, age, race, ethnicity, disability or other biases are portrayed. The Lions awarded each year serve as a benchmark for the global creative community and the Unstereotype Criteria demonstrates true structural change and further advances the belief that creativity should reflect the world as a place of equality and tolerance.

To support its membership, the Unstereotype Alliance has created a set of tools to help marketers and agency teams create unstereotyped communications. The Unstereotype Alliance developed globally applicable "best practice playbooks" that provide the Alliance’s 3P framework – Presence, Perspective, and Personality – to drive change at scale. The Unstereotyped Content Playbook encourages brands to ask themselves the following questions during the creative process: Who is being featured in the communication? Who is framing the story? What is the depth of the character? This framework aims to help move the industry to a place where all brands are truly progressive in terms of gender portrayal.  These playbooks are complemented by the Unstereotyped Culture Playbook that focuses on ways to create a diverse and Inclusive workplace to allow for the fueling of progressive and inclusive advertising

By being an Unstereotype Alliance member, organizations have exclusive access to additional benchmarks broken down at a market and category level and guided workshops to develop and monitor gender portrayals in advertising. The Unstereotype Alliance is developing a first of its kind global advertising measurement tool, which is a single measure that helps advertisers distinguish between progressive and regressive gender portrayal of characters in advertising. As part of the Unstereotype Alliance's commitment to diversity, inclusion and affordability, it is an open-sourced  metric that is offered globally at zero cost to the advertising industry.

Additionally, with considerable demand coming in from around the world to address both the outdated stereotypes and the local cultural nuances that influence content, the Unstereotype Alliance has started to launch national chapters in established and developing markets. In February 2019, the first national chapter was started in Brazil. The Unstereotype Alliance is also proud to welcome the national chapters that are opening in Turkey and South Africa. Other national chapters plan to open in the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates later this year.

Furthermore, the Unstereotype Alliance is pleased to welcome Safaricom as its newest Vice Chair.  Safaricom is a leading telecommunications company headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya and joining AT&T, IPG and Unilever [TG1]in championing this movement.

Lastly, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, is the recipient of the 2019 Cannes LionHeart award in recognition of her advocacy for women, human rights, and social justice throughout the world, and for her leadership of the industry-wide diversity initiative, Unstereotype Alliance.

“In just two years, the Unstereotype Alliance has convened a diverse network of companies to eradicate gender-based stereotypes and shape the future of marketing,” says Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. “It is imperative to confront the negative stereotypes in the societies where there are predominantly harmful, outdated gender stereotypes to create a culture of equality.”

In the year ahead, Unstereotype Alliance members is continuing to build on the success and collaboration of its first two years. The focus is  the widespread adoption and implementation of measurement tools that help brands tackle stereotypes, the expansion of evidence and advocacy and the growth of its membership to catalyze the movement to make lasting, positive societal changes.

For more information about the Unstereotype Alliance, please visit http://www.unstereotypealliance.org

About Unstereotype Alliance

The Unstereotype Alliance is a thought and action platform that uses advertising as a force for good to drive positive change. It seeks to eradicate harmful gender-based stereotypes. The alliance is focused on empowering women in all their diversity (race, class, age, ability, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, language, education, etc.) and addressing harmful masculinities to help create a gender equal world.

MEDIA CONTACT: 

Tara Mullins 

Ogilvy
212-880-5243
Tara.mullins@ogilvy.com