On Friday last week at the UN Women Australia #IWD2021 lunch I stood in front of 1200 people and reminded them according to the World Economic Forum (WEF) the first generation of women that would experience equality would do so in the year 2120.

My 16-year old daughter was in the room. That’s not her daughter, nor her daughter’s daughter.  And yet, here we were gathered to ‘celebrate’ International Women’s Day.

And if you think that’s sobering, wrap your head around the facts: over 200 million girls alive today have been subjected to female genital mutilation; around 250 million women and girls experience sexual and physical violence by a partner, women spend three times as many hours on unpaid care work; only one in nine leaders of countries are women.

Perhaps, up until only recently, you might have been able to dismiss and even distance your conscience from those global stats, living happily ever after under the illusion that down under we’re alright thanks Jack. Truth is, pretty much only if your name is Jack.

On that aforementioned WEF Global report, Australia shamefully ranked 44^th.  The Editor of Mi3 is unlikely to cut this next line, which acknowledges our trans-Tasman friends trounce us at 6^th, 38 places higher.

But in the last few weeks, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you may have woken from your Disney Princess slumber on equality to realise all is not right. Courageous young women have broken the culture of silence to demand we talk about the unspeakables.

And in so doing, fuelled an outpouring and uprising of fury from women and good men on the malaise that we have been muted into accepting. Dare I say, we’re calling time on thoughts and prayers.

Inequality by numbers

On average, one woman a week is killed at the hands of her current or former partner.

One in three women have experienced sexual and/or physical violence since the age of 15.

Women spend twice as much time doing unpaid care work than men.

Women only make up 18% of CEO positions.

Women earn 87c to every man’s dollar.

According to WGEA almost half of the employers who undertook a pay gap analysis last year took no actions to address the inequities it uncovered. Gender equality, the empowerment of women and girls, has slipped off the agenda, slipped out of the budget and all the way up the Hill. 

Without doubt Covid has surfaced new crimes of gender inequity, exposing more women to domestic violence, financial hardship and reversing some hard-won gains of the previous two decades. But let’s not kid ourselves, we weren’t on the precipice of glory pre-pandemic.

Jack’s alright, Jill has been tumbling downhill for some time.

What we can do today

It was our industry’s academic superhero Professor Scott Galloway that gave me a new perspective on change when he described what occurred in corporate-land through Covid with elegant simplicity: “Ten years progress in ten weeks”.

Indeed, through Covid the public and private sector, billionaires and small business entrepreneurs, people from all walks of life proved on a global scale that change is not only possible, but that it can be achieved faster than anyone could have imagined.

We also proved we could act in the best interests of our community. Even if it wasn’t easy, nor comfortable.  We did it, because we had to. Lives depended on it. You might recall Mary Meeker last year in her Coronavirus trends report posed that perhaps Covid-19 was the wake-up call we needed to get to a better place. And we did, momentarily.

So let’s bring it home to the media and marketing industry: what can we do? As a collective we are the best placed to shape and change consumers attitudes and behaviours. It’s what it says on the tin. 

We can play a vital role to help brands and businesses navigate the importance of accelerating change on equality.  For years now, climaxing around the Black Lives Matter movement, the industry has spent copious time round-tabling and navel gazing in its search for purpose, to give businesses meaning beyond shareholder value.

Realising the birthright of every second person on the planet and addressing the life-limiting consequences of inaction is the most pressing human rights issue of our time and on the current trajectory, the next century. Look no further. How’s that for purpose?

Let’s challenge stereotypes. Once again Australia isn’t immune on this front either. Be it the quintessential Aussie bloke, the homemaker mother or the tropes we overlay on our ethnic communities or indigenous people, stereotypes slip out on scripts and onto screens.

Unchallenged harmful stereotypes are a root cause of gender discrimination and inequality. As long as these portrayals are perpetuated and reinforced in advertising and our media, we will continue to wade through treacle on gender equality.

Our industry prides itself on wielding the power to shape and influence culture and society in a positive way. Last year in Cannes, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngucka, the Executive Director for UN Women, delivered a 15-minute address, ‘Dear White People and Men’. 

She implored white people and men not to waste their privilege but to use it make change. For the industry to use its specialist skills to influence thinking at scale.

She drew parallels between the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, highlighting the role brands played during apartheid to force the world not to look away.

Imagine if we put our collective will and influence to right the wrongs of stereotypes and gave brands real purpose on the biggest human rights issue of our time.

Gender inequalities are a global humanitarian crisis, it is a pandemic. And whether you refer to the pink recession or the shadow pandemic, yes we’ve given them gendered, subordinate references, the crisis is real.  At 44^th and slipping, we aren’t exempt. The lives of women and girls are at risk.

Let’s practice what we preach. Our industry in Australia, and indeed globally has notoriously been led and shaped through a largely male-dominated leadership. We know it. Our clients know it.

So much so, at Cannes Live last year the Global CMO Council enshrined in its 12 point plan the significance of gender equality: on scripts, in meetings, in supplier teams. Members of the Council, global advertisers, went on to affirm they never want to see another storyboard or sit in another agency meeting that does not represent the population we serve.

Anecdotally, we know Australian clients are also demanding agency teams address gender imbalance. Client-led reform on equality and representation through the supply chain is permeating the industry. Read that again.

Stand aside

After lunch on Friday last week, I headed to another UN Women Australia event, this time hosted by Val Morgan and LinkedIn to once again ‘celebrate’ International Women’s Day with the Media Agency community.

I was asked the question, ‘what should the fellas in the room do to address the gender equality issue?’

My answer was, if you believe in gender equality, and you believe that we should all be dissatisfied with waiting another 100 years to give your female colleague to your left or to your right, or across the corridor, the opportunity to live, work and thrive in a safe environment where she is rewarded and respected with the same opportunities as you have, then speak out, ask questions and know when to stand aside. It’s a big ask, I hear some of you say.

In a recent interview with the Honourable Julia Gillard, I discovered the best example of this. In New Zealand there is a process where all the regions rank their political candidates and then those regional lists come together to form the national list.

If you rank highly on the regional list, you’re likely to get into parliament. At a regional meeting to choose the new candidate, Grant Robertson was seen as the favourite and was nominated accordingly.

But he stood up and said ‘I don’t wish to be nominated until Jacinda Ardern has been placed’. He then sat down. And so, Jacinda got placed in the regional list and as a result, was elected to Parliament.

There are so many ways men in our industry can choose to change the ratio, change the stereotypes, take the panel pledge, question the optics, get gender equality back on the management agenda, question whether our recruitment, retention and reward processes are addressing inequalities –  and quite simply when push comes to shove, stand aside. Ultimately for the greater good, which is actually not a fraction over the bare minimum being asked, 50:50.

Your agency, your marketing team is not impervious to the stats above. Women that earn 87c to the man’s dollar; that one woman in three assaulted each week are sitting just a stone’s throw away. What are you doing about it?

As an industry we like to set big, hairy, audacious goals. UN Women Australia has set one too: To accelerate 100 years of progress in 10 years. Gender equality 99.5 years from now is not an option.

It’s customary on International Women’s Day to stop and reaffirm our pledge that gender equality matters. That’s the easy bit. But the real question to ask is when? Does gender equality matter enough to you to improve the result before 2120?

For me personally, I feel anger in the pit of my stomach, anger that I too have been politely stifling. Great women and men have been fighting for equality for more than 76 years. And as the famous placard at a women’s rally once declared, “I can’t believe I am still protesting this shit”.

What will you do? At the very least, we ask that you watch and share this film widely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drLUPJQgJ5E