Are women unfairly labeled?

TORRES

“You’re such a girl.”

Not many people think that for some, this quote may be demeaning. Some brands have used this concept in their commercials portraying a man as a girl denoting weakness. While some people find it amusing, a lot see it as unfair labeling against women.

A recent survey by P&G (Philippines), which was done through online new site Rappler, showed that Filipino women are still unfairly labeled. This is even if the country fared even better than developed nations in The Global Gender Gap Index 2013 ranking fifth.

The Global Gender Gap Index “is a framework for capturing the magnitude and scope of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress.” It was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006.

Three hundred Filipino men and women participated in the survey, held from Oct. 26 to 31 last year in the National Capital region and nearby cities.

Survey results

Pepe Torres, country marketing manager for hair care of P&G, revealed some “startling” results.

“From the survey, we learned that 70 percent of men think that women need to downplay their personality to be accepted,” he says.

What is even more surprising for them is that 71 percent of those surveyed (both men and women) say that when jobs are scarce, men deserve more employment than women do.

While there are many women leading Philippine government agencies now and there had been two women presidents, the survey revealed that 62 percent of men and 64 percent of women think that men make better political leaders than women.

This is just one of the issues why P&G came up with the “Whip It” commercial, which debuted online a few months ago.

“For Pantene, it started from our purpose as a brand, which is to empower women,” Torres says. “How we can inspire them through our communications. We asked ourselves what’s holding women back from shining on a broader scale and not just what happens to their hair.”

The commercial shows the “general” perception between men and women. The perception being more favorable to the former.

Labels

“If a man might be persuasive, a woman is more likely to be called pushy,” Torres explains. “We decided to pursue this route and along the way, as we decided to take this message seriously, we then developed the survey of gender bias in the Philippines.”

Torres knew that they were embarking on a sensitive issue and didn’t want to offend or even project the male species as evil.

“We thought about two risks,” he says. “First, people would probably ask what it has to do with Pantene. Who are we to go into this issue? Do we have any right to talk about this?

“Second, admittedly we are not a longtime NGO (nongovernmental organization) that has always had the expertise fighting for women’s rights. There are valuable organizations around the country that have been operating on the grassroots level as well as institutional level to change policies that may have been unfair to women,” Torres adds.

However, two things outweighed these risks. These were also the deciding factors in going for the commercial.

Risks

“We felt confident that this is the kind of message that will resonate with the women that we are trying to speak and appeal to,” Torres says. “And this is consistent with what the brand stands for or purpose is.”

“We think, regardless of our admitted lack of credentials in terms of expertise, that we bring a lot of value in this discussion by generating much more awareness and discussion around this issue. We think that, in a way, we are going to be able to help existing efforts by being able to use our existing influence in media to drive greater awareness.”

With more than 45 million views on YouTube, Torres believes that the “Whip It” commercial has generated so much discussion on the issue of gender bias especially in the workplace. The comments range from favorable to not so favorable, but the campaign achieved its goal, which is to drive awareness.

“In the past few months, would you have much discussion or self-awareness among individuals and the desire to change in the past three months? The campaign, which is a local initiative of P&G (Philippines), has generated a billion impressions.

It may seem like a long shot during the conceptualization of the commercial to “change” people. But it didn’t stop them from pursuing it.

Awareness and change

“We just wanted to bring greater awareness [to all] and hopefully each individual that has been touched by the communication now has a clear sense of personal awareness,” Torres says.

Torres adds the commercial doesn’t antagonize or act as a holier-than-thou wake-up call. This is already an institutionalized bias and some people grew around it.

“It’s hard to blame a single person who has grown up in a society that generally behaves this way,” he explains. “What we think makes sense is make the bias obvious in such a way that an individual appreciates and say to themselves this isn’t something that I would support consciously. What we want to take away is the ‘unconscious bias’ and bring in some conscious effort to fix this.”

These efforts are not stopping with the commercial. Torres reveals that the company has been working with key personalities who are willing to share their own inspiring stories of overcoming gender bias in society.

“We have laid the foundation for partnerships with key organizations that have much greater expertise in this area down to the grassroots level,” Torres says. “What we are working on now is defining a plan that will make sure that we have a lot of value added by partnering with them. We can bring much greater awareness to a cause or initiative they are championing. It is a strong way to make an impact and sustain this campaign which we genuinely believe in.”

As for sustaining the campaign, Torres says, “For as long as this message is relevant to the woman we are trying to speak to, we will continue sustaining this campaign.”