Is What We See
What We Are? Singapore Women & Their Representation in Advertising
A study by R3 and AWARE
Is What We See What We Are? Singapore Women & Their Representation in Advertising
Looking at Gender Portrayal in Singapore Advertising Women make up 39% of the global workforce. Singapore surpasses the global average with 60% of working-age women engaged actively in the labour market. This ratio has been steadily increasing from 28% in 1970.
Industry Panel
Why is it then that Singapore advertisements are 6 times more likely to show women doing domestic chores than men, and men are 32% more likely to be featured in lead roles? To better understand this disparity, leading women rights organization, AWARE, and marketing consultancy, R3, undertook a study to review current practices in gender portrayal in Singapore commercials with the aim of making brands more accountable towards gender equality in their advertising.
METHODOLOGY 200 television advertisements were reviewed and scored across four key attributes: 1. Body image portrayals 2. Objectification 3. Gender stereotypes in roles and characters 4. Female representation These advertisements were produced by Singapore’s top 100 advertisers, which represents a wide range of industries. These ads were broadcast between 2018 and 2020. Each advertisement was scored independently on a scale of 1 to 5 by AWARE, R3 and a panel of marketing industry leaders. The lowest score (1) was given to work which actively and consciously strengthened a negative stereotype of a gender. The highest score (5) was attributed to work that had made active and conscious efforts to break negative stereotypes.
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DRIVING TRANSFORMATION FOR MARKETERS & THEIR AGENCIES
TOP PERFORMING ADS Vaseline and Apple lead with best representations of women The best performing ads were from the Telecommunications, Financial Services, Beauty and Food & Beverage industries. Vaseline, Apple (appearing twice), both of Singapore’s leading telcos — Singtel (appearing twice) and StarHub — as well as Unilever’s Dove, financial services brand FWD and McDonald’s - rounded up the Top 10.
Vaseline “Invisible Strength Vaseline’s spot “Invisible Strength” took first place; a brave effort by a feminine skincare brand to deliver the message that skincare products are not merely about beauty, but about care. The ad also depicts an older female protagonist, which is a rarity in beauty brands. The spot was created by Singapore company Viddsee.
Apple “Daughter” Apple’s breakthrough short film “Daughter” showed that women from all walks of life don’t have to follow traditional roles defined by society. This work also boldly features a single mother as the protagonist — a segment that is often ignored by brands. The advertisement was created by TBWA Media Arts Lab.
SINGTEL “In Return: Interview with Shaza Ishak”
The Singtel commercial featuring an interview with Theatre Arts scholar, Shaza Ishak, was one advertisement that foregrounded a woman’s vocation and artistic ambitions and framed them as an impressive achievement.
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Is What We See What We Are? Singapore Women & Their Representation in Advertising
KEY OBSERVATIONS Advertising is slow to communicate the change in female roles and responsibilities 1
Women in leadership and decision-making positions need to be portrayed more frequently While brands have started depicting women in professional capacities, almost a quarter of the ads that were reviewed had a storyline that involved a knowledge provider/knowledge recipient narrative. More than twice as many ads depicted men providing knowledge in our ads—e.g. teaching others or answering questions—than women. This was despite the fact that ads depicted men and women receiving such knowledge at around the same rate. This unfortunate common portrayal does not reflect the growing number of women who find themselves in leadership roles in Singapore business. According to Grant Thornton International’s study “Women in Business” (2019), women make up 33% of senior management teams in Singapore and 87% of businesses surveyed had at least one woman on their senior management team, an increase of 9% over the past year. Though confidence among Singapore’s female business leaders is a topic that has been studied — most recently in the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs where despite their access to quality higher-education only “21% of women in Singapore see themselves as having the required skills and knowledge to become entrepreneurs” — reinforcing such stereotypes in advertising only encourages such poor perception.
Study findings:
48% more likely to depict men than women as having paid employment of some sort.
6x more likely to depict women performing some sort of domestic work (e.g. cleaning, cooking or childcare) than men.
69% feature a male in the role of the teacher or rescuer.
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DRIVING TRANSFORMATION FOR MARKETERS & THEIR AGENCIES
APPENDIX TOP 10 ADS IN SINGAPORE FOR GENDER REPRESENTATION Rank
brand
advertisment
1
Visible Scars, Invisible Strength: Lady Without Fingerprints
2
Behind The Mac — International Women’s Day
3
Chinese New Year | Shot on iPhone 11 Pro — Daughter
4
In Return: Interview with Shaza Ishak
5
GOMO feat. Preetipls
6
Cancer Insurance - My Girlfriend’s Such a Fighter
7
Founding Mothers of Singapore
8
Black Belt
9
Rachel’s Story: Living with Eczema
10
McDelivery Day
REFERENCES • • • • • • • • •
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https://www.imsph.sg/hit-women-brand-needs-charm-formidable-group-buyers/ https://www.nielsen.com/apac/en/insights/article/2019/women-in-asia-pacific-are-buying-in-the-fast-lane/ http://www.mynewsdesk.com/sg/pwc-singapore/pressreleases/female-millennials-are-the-most-confident-and-ambitious-of-any-female-generation-1125508 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/14/sexism-in-advertising-industry-gender-pay-gap-diversity https://www.marketingweek.com/diageo-gender-diversity-advertising/ https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/economy/labour-employment-wages-and-productivity/latest-data https://sbr.com.sg/hr-education/news/women-now-take-one-third-singapore-senior-leadership-teams-study https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/economy/labour-employment-wages-and-productivity/latest-data https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/leadership-management/empowering-women-is-key-to-unlocking-singapores-economic-potential