Challenging Gender

Challenging Gender

The Traditional Status Quo

“Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” John Gray

Gender, the cultural definition of masculine and feminine characteristics, is the most defining feature of who you are. It reflects how people speak to you (in many languages such as Arabic, phrases are pronounced differently depending on gender), what you can look like, what you can learn, where you can be, what you can do. Gender infiltrates every way we experience the world from gendered places (garden shed, dressing room), colours, shapes (round edges vs. sharp angles) descriptions (“X is a tough little thing” vs. “X is a feisty little thing”).

However, increasingly society questions the traditional status quo as these deep seated rules conflict in ways that demonstrates how culturally dependent, rather than biologically fixed they are. For example, what should a baby boy want to play with a blue doll or a pink engine?

The History of Gender

• (Pre Historic) Men hunt, women gather
• 3000 years of separate worlds- Wo/men co-exist living different lives
• World Wars: Women step into men’s shoes and achieve political equality
• 1950s: Hyper domestic propaganda encourages women back to the home and men out to the workplace
• Late 20th Century: “Feminism” and “Effeminate” create dirty arguments
• 21st Century: Society seeks a new gender language. Facebook provides a choice of 71 different types of gender for you to choose, Sweden provide a gender neutral pronoun

Why is Gender so important? What does it give us?

As you build you awareness and your sense of self, gender is the easiest hook to work out who you are. In fact probably the first words you ever heard was someone announcing your gender (“It’s a boy!!”). But as you build other identity hooks to define yourself (e.g. Londoner, researcher etc.) the more complex your sense of individuality becomes and biological factors (gender, age) become less important. As countries continue to champion individuality and self development, increasingly people are able to tap in to passion groups, or shared experiences such as travel to feel that they belong and are taken seriously.

In progressive publications the results are already reflecting this change of self defining features. In a recent poll by the Protein Magazine “gender” is now the 7th means in order to define yourself, not first.

A cultural overview of how the concept of gender is being challenged

SMG’s Zodiac tool measures the online publications around a theme- here Gender

1. Economy, Work, Law & Politics
2. Family: home life and shopping decisions
3. Visual culture: Celebrities, music, fashion, sport
4. Socialising, community and hobbies
5. Learning and technology
6. Health and Biology

1. Economy, Work, Law & Politics

“Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world.”
Hilary Clinton

“If the UK is going to meet the science and engineering challenges of the 21st century, we need to engage a larger number of girls and inspire them to get involved.” Frances Saunders, President of the Institute of Physics

• Booz Allen reports that if women were employed at the same rates as men in the United States, Japan, and Egypt, the GDPs of those countries would increase by 5, 9 and 34 percent, respectively.
• Fortune suggests only 5% of Fortune 1000 companies (51 total) have female CEOs, but those industry leaders generate 7% of the Fortune 1000′s total revenue.
• Companies pledge to end the pay gap (for every £1 a man earns a woman earns 80p)
• Paternity Rights: Shift to flexible working and increased paternity cover
• Move towards a gender neutral voice in government: Sweden has 44% seats in parliament held by women, UK 29% seats in parliament
• 9 in 10 FT employed women say gender discrimination is still a problem in the workplace, 30% say career has been negatively impacted (IIP)
• An increase of women in IT could see an extra £2.6 billion a year generated for the UK economy (Nominet)

How can companies and brands champion diversity? Where can learning/skills/platforms for discussion be provided?

Examples:

• Australia’s No Gender Day
• Nationwide assessed as being top employer for gender (and also race)
• Avon’s developed sales network channel for women
• Uber has announced plans to create 1 million jobs for women by the year 2020 as a way to “accelerate economic opportunity for women.”

2. Visual Culture: Celebrities, Music, Sport, Entertainment

“Sex sells because it attracts attention. People are hard-wired to notice sexually relevant information, so ads with sexual content get noticed.”

Tom Reichert, professor and head of the department of advertising and public relations in the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

• Female sports are given the same recognition as men’s- female boxing at the 2012 Olympics and the first Women’s Boat race in 2015 was won by Oxford.
• Olympic champions championed the gender neutral “fit” rather than “slim” as an ideal for both women and men to aspire to
• BBC required to have quotas to get women within panel shows
• The Sun moves page 3 online
• The Bechdel test assesses the film industries reflection of women
• Celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Patricia Arquette (Oscar Speech), Emma Watson (launches He for She), Angelina Jolie, fight for international women’s rights and raise awareness of positive feminism
• Girls are 5x more likely to be trolled than a man online.

What humour can be utilised to expose and jump on sexist or aggressive content made by others? Which celebrities should be championed? What visual qualities (e.g. submission vs. strength) should companies/brands embody to talk sex?

Examples:

• Always (SMG) run like a girl questions language in sport
• Santander supports “Fit” not “thin” Olympic hero Jess Ennis
• Nike: Gender race MvsW
• Selfridges: Agender clothing
• Sea-lions #gamergate
• Shakespearean actors mock one direction comments
• Bodyform puts men straight on periods

3. Socialising, community and hobbies

“I’m neither ‘pro-women’ nor ‘anti-men’. I’m just ‘Thumbs up for the six billion”

Catlin Moran, How to be a Woman

• British Bake Off, British Sewing Bee, Strictly Come Dancing, X-factor all with male champions
• 52% of women are gamers
• Business, History or Philosophy and Mass communication studies are the most gender neutral university courses

Should the conversation be about creating a NON gendered space, or championing men and women as equals in their own spaces

Examples

• Bulmers focus on start of the night rather than boys drinking
• Cancer Research Race for Life
• Nike MvsW
• Dove Dads #realdadmoments
• Vice and Masculinity

4. Family life

“Forget the traditional family. There are now three distinct models, associated with professionals, working-class natives and immigrants”

The Economist 2014

• One fifth of women are the bread winners
• 28% of main shoppers with Children in HH are men (Kantar Worldpanel)
• Men are 10 times more likely to stay at home than they were a decade ago and 82% in full time work would like to spend more time with their children
• Open space living vs. rooms belonging to different members of the household
• Dad’s are more hands on but at no point do they do the bulk of the childcare (Cooking: Women 41 min, Men 32 min) (Cleaning/Laundry: Women 57mins Men 25mins) (Trajectory 2011)
• Absent fathers can contribute to anti-social behaviour in children

How can brands assist and involve both genders to be present in family life and through the family purchase cycle from consideration, purchase and advocacy?

• Hamley’s removes Boy/Girl floors and focuses on the products instead
• Dyson- focus on technology rather than cleaning in the home
• Apples take the “male” geek out of technology
• Complaints on sexist cookery ads (Sainsbury’s Mum’s night off. Let’s BBQ”), Co Op “For when it’s dad’s turn to cook”

5. Health and Biology

“Although women on average, do not appear to have empathetic abilities than men, there is compelling evidence that woman will display greater accuracy than men when their empathic motivation is engaged by social cues that remind them that they, as women, are expected to excel at empathy related tasks. [Change] those social cues, e.g. with a financial incentive or to define empathetic behaviour as gender neutral, suddenly men are equally as empathetic as women”

Cordelia Fine The Delusion of Gender

• Neuroscience defines the brain as plastic, open to all social cues not just sex hormones
• The number of children referred for help with gender dysphoria has quadrupled (Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust 2015)
• 71 types of gender on Facebook
• The Equality Network and the Scottish Transgender Alliance said a third gender marker should be available to people who have a non-binary gender identity.
• Elton John vs D&G over IVF “synthetic babies
• Miley Cyrus launches Happy Hippy foundation for LGBT youth and their families

Examples

• Paddy Power + Stonewall: We don’t care which team you play for
• BBC’s Boy meets Girl — transgender TV show
• Clear and Clean support Transgendered teens

Where are spaces for non-gender or complex gender issues to be discussed? How can cues of gender be manipulated to be non-gendered

The Future of Gender

The future of mankind is utterly dependent on women pairing up with men. But whilst biology might create babies, biology doesn’t hinder men to raise those babies or women to provide for those babies. Therefore gender as a cultural term should not be worn as a tight uniform, but rather a loose baggy outfit which we can choose to wear or not wear, as and when we want.