U.N. Women released an ad campaign on Oct 16 that utilized popular Google search engine terms about women, all to get one point across: That we, as an international community, are farther from achieving gender equality than many thought. The ad features faces of women covered at the mouth with Google search bars that show entries such as “women should stay at home” and “women need to be put in their place.”
A week after its release, the campaign is still generating its fair share of support and criticism. You need not look further than this widely circulated TIME Magazine article where both sides have been sounding off. Many applaud the campaign for at least raising awareness for women’s rights, but just as many have pointed out their own problems with the campaign. While the TIME Magazine entry serves as just one of many online sources that have featured the campaign, the vast majority of the views expressed match those found on social media and other news sites.
Some found the images effective but questioned the Google Search methodology used to show negative messages about women. A recurring point was that the search entries were inaccurate in that many of the autocomplete texts don’t actually appear as the top search entries for women, and presenting them as such was inaccurate. As one reader, JorgeEscamilla, summed it up:
“I see the point of the campaign, which is clever. I also support the campaign’s goal. However, I think it is misleading to show the results as top ones would appear, when they have been selectively picked from a pool of results to get the point across. Typing any of these fragments in Google will yield these and other autocomplete results, some of which are actually positive. There’s some tint of highlighting the bad to have a dramatic effect… it did get us talking though, so it’s effective.”
But while popular, the ad campaign’s Google search results have not rivaled the most contended point of discussion: Negative perceptions of women versus negative perceptions of men. For an ad campaign that specifically focused on gender equality and discrimination against women, the images have whipped up quite a considerable debate that has called for negative views of men to be addressed as well. More than a few individuals who saw the campaign took it upon themselves to also look up search engine entries about men.
“How exactly does focusing on women only for an issue that affects both going to help with anything except driving up misinformation and resentment against men, the group targeted with the blame?” asks Mark_Neilg. “The problem with gendering non gendered problems, in this way, is you present them as problems only women face, and the problem for men gets buried.”
In the most extreme cases, however, a handful of individuals have taken it upon themselves to determine whether or not women should be able to participate as men do in society.
“I’d just like to comment that I’m shocked at the number of people here who seem to imply that women should have equal rights, Shayne O’Neill for example commenting that the third world needs feminism!” says pisceanstarchild. “ALL the good things in women’s lives have come about as a result of the hard work, blood, sweat, and tears (and lives) of men.”
What’s interesting is that most of these readers are likely from the U.S. and other countries considered part of the developed Western world. While some of the criticism can actually be very fair and constructive, the more incendiary remarks about women counter our perceptions about gender equality in the U.S. The U.N. Women campaign has shown that even in a country that prides itself on decades of championing women’s rights, the U.S. also has its fair share of individuals who believe in “traditional” notions of gender.
The reactions to the campaign reveal the divide that still exists in America where women’s roles in society are concerned. Today in the U.S. more women than men attend college and women have become a key part of the workforce. But throw in incidents like North Carolina’s continued attempts to shut down family planning initiatives, reactions to the Steubenville rape case and that of Daisy Coleman, 14, and you begin to wonder how far we have actually come and how much farther we have to go.
If anything, the U.N. ad campaign raises a few key questions for us: How much progress has the U.S. achieved when it comes to gender equality? How do we measure progress? But most of all, what more can we and need we do to match our expectations of how women and men should be treated, if we are in fact unequal?