"YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY" OR HAVE WE REALLY?

In the 60's/70's Virginia Slims Cigarrettes iconic advertisement "You've come a long way, baby" was targeted at the "independent," "liberated"  woman, and indicated that women had made great strides from being denied all rights to now being able to smoke in public without being derided. Certainly calling women "baby" in my mind, was not a way to show "how far we'd come!" Today's reality is that women's equality is still a myth and there is still  a long, long way to go.

There have been several  situations recently that made me recognize the reality of the long road that is still ahead for women striving to be on equal footing in society with men. Because even though women's rights have advanced greatly, we are still a disturbing distance away from equality.

When I was in university, I refused to wear the label of feminist, because in my naive, youthful belief, I thought that feminists were radicals who were stuck in a paradigm that had shifted and here I was an

example of what a woman could do without burning a bra, or standing on a soapbox lamenting what hadn't yet happened. "Suck it up" I thought. "Women can do whatever they want to do, there are no barriers!" In fact I penned an article deriding women at the university who were attempting to get the term Chairman changed to Chairperson. What's in a word? Didn't these women have better things to do? And I see the same naiveté in many a young woman with whom I speak with today.

At this point in time in my life, I would call myself a feminist which basically means someone who is advocating that women have rights equal to men. And those rights transcend political, legal and economic rights. They are also the right to be seen as equal, to be respected as equal, to have our opinions counted as equal, to be equally represented within corporations, to be able to sing a gender  neutral anthem and to not be objectified in the media.

Words matter and equally how women are presented in advertising matters too!

Let me talk about words first. Recently there is a movement to revise the Canadian National Anthem to becoming gender neutral. The words to be changed are "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command." Let me point out that the original anthem wording was "thou dost in us command", which was altered in 1913 for no seemingly known reason. I have seen on the street interviews and polls taken by various media outlets and what is frightening is that over 80% think this in a tempest in a teapot. "It's tradition" they say. Really? Then why do we rail against the rights violations against women in other parts of the world? Because let's be realistic it is their tradition, as it was ours in decades and centuries gone by, when women were mere chattel. Words reflect societal attitudes -- they do matter (click here for information on the anthem debate).

And how about advertising? We see the Dove ads which espouse the "natural beauty" of women. Yet what many don't realize is that Unilever which owns the Dove brand, also has under its umbrella the Axe brand, wherein the advertisements portray women, well, let's just say not in a real positive light.

Here is an ad which was published in 2013 by Ridge Corporation which makes "sideliners" for trucks. This was shown in a presentation to demonstrate the attitudes which are still prevalent within the trucking industry and in supply chain. There was a deep intake of breath among all the women in the audience, because quite honestly I don't think any of us thought that this could happen in 2013! I mean, really? Aren't these ads that you could possibly see being dreamed up by Don Draper in Mad Men? The 60's maybe, but not today.

So you may say, well this is the trucking industry...so "boys will be boys," which is not an excuse by the way...far from it.  But it made me wonder what other ads are out there that are chauvinistic in their message, and which have been in the media since the year 2000. And I didn't have to do much of a search, let me tell you. From milk, to Playstation, to IT, to organ donation, women are being objectified or stereotyped in ways that are offensive.  Advertisements which mold our societal attitudes and mold the thinking of our youth.

Society allows women to be minimized through words, advertisements and actions. Can you imagine someone sloughing off an ethnic comment or stereotype in advertisements by saying "racists will be racists." Or if an anthem said "in all of us white anglo saxons command," would the challenge to the wording fall on deaf ears?  You know the answer. No one would stand for it and things would be changed quickly by governments, and  corporations using the ads would be vilified, protested against and boycotted.

It is time to stop society from sticking its collective head in the sand and face the reality....there is no equality and until words, advertisements and systemic discrimination is addressed there never will be. 

Yes, we've come a long way, but we still have quite a distance to go. Let's ensure that we don't get weary and keep moving towards the goal of equality!

(Here are only a  few of hundreds of potential examples of ads which have appeared within the last few years. Get ready to be shocked)