A brand new analysis examine from artistic transformation agency WPP and SeeHer, a world motion to precisely painting girls in advertising and marketing, promoting, media and leisure, reveals essential gaps and alternatives targeted on girls and individuals who determine as girls throughout reproductive care, weight range and psychological well being.
In accordance with the companies’ new examine, Well being On Her Phrases (HOHT), girls deal with greater than 80 p.c of healthcare spending choices within the U.S., and so they make up 65 p.c of the workforce within the healthcare trade. But for all of the progress made in gender equality over time, there are critical disparities and points in the way in which girls’s well being is portrayed in media, and ladies and different marginalized genders usually are not framed as a major viewers in well being advertising and marketing. Ladies say that they’re prone to be loyal to manufacturers who deal with entrenched and pervasive taboos in media—and converse to them authentically and with dignity.
“Advertisers are inclined to flatten womanhood and our well being wants right into a demographic field. However girls’s well being is way extra dynamic and nuanced than the way it’s at the moment introduced within the media,” mentioned Lindsay Pattison, chief shopper officer of WPP, in a information launch. “Our trade has a accountability to rework how girls are portrayed and supply extra multifaceted illustration and prioritize exhibiting girls’s psychological well being extra authentically, weight extra realistically and reproductive well being extra inclusively.”
WPP companies Gray and Mindshare partnered to uncover and analyze prevalent themes on the truth of girls’s well being in right this moment’s atmosphere, how girls’s well being is being depicted in media right this moment, and the way manufacturers can modify efforts to raised symbolize and remodel the assist of her well being wants.
“This groundbreaking examine exhibits that we as entrepreneurs in well being and wellness should do a greater job listening to the wants of girls and connecting with them on their phrases and their private well being wants,” mentioned Cassandra Sinclair, president of Gray Well being and Wellness, within the launch. “Ladies need manufacturers to be weak, courageous, and actual. They need manufacturers to grasp that their well being is private and connecting with them should be extra inclusive of the realities of their lives.”
“The state of girls’s well being and bodily autonomy, together with healthcare for trans and non-binary communities, is in a tenuous place. Media and communications play a major function within the pervasive taboos on matters like reproductive care, psychological well being, and extra,” mentioned Rachel Lowenstein, international head of inclusive innovation at Mindshare, within the launch. “However it doesn’t need to be that approach. Manufacturers have a chance to have an effect on change and provides girls and marginalized genders the extra nuanced, numerous, trustworthy illustration that they deserve. In doing so, they will earn this viewers’s loyalty whereas driving constructive change on the planet round us.”
“We’re so proud to associate with WPP on this essential examine. The perception clearly demonstrates that customers need content material reflecting girls of their multiplicity, with numerous wants and experiences, moderately than monolithic storytelling,” mentioned Christine Guilfoyle, government vice chairman at SeeHer, Affiliation of Nationwide Advertisers, within the launch. “On the subject of depictions of girls’s well being and wellness, there’s a lot work to be accomplished. With this examine, we’re launching a brand new vertical, SeeHer Well being, to precisely symbolize girls’s well being and wellness-related points throughout advertising and marketing, media, and leisure.”
Prime themes that emerged embody:
Dynamism of womanhood
The media positions girls’s experiences of well being in a singular vogue. The best way by which manufacturers at the moment join with girls is at odds with the way in which by which girls self-identify. A complete of 44 p.c of BIWOC wish to see extra numerous representations of race/ethnicity in well being communications, because the media locations a powerful emphasis on womanhood as younger, white, cishet, and non-disabled.
Finish of exceptionalism
Analysis discovered girls are not often marketed simply as they’re, with manufacturers as a substitute prioritizing girls doing extraordinary issues. Advertising efforts must increase to concentrate on a broader, extra numerous phase of girls and reduce concentrate on this phenomenon of exceptionalism to drive inclusion.
Transcend girls seen solely as caregivers
Ladies are nonetheless seen primarily within the context of their capacity to take care of others and expressed the have to be seen for her entire self. Her self-worth must be seen as greater than caring for others.
WPP and SeeHer pursued this analysis to encourage manufacturers and organizations to interrupt down historic limitations and make investments additional considering, insights and assets to make sure girls’s true views and wishes are precisely translated into methods to drive higher well being outcomes for girls.
Obtain the total report right here.
The crew designed and fielded a customized on-line survey to 1,545 girls and non-binary individuals ages 18+ throughout the U.S., leveraging the Viewers Origin platform run by Kantar Profiles Well being. The viewers was inclusive of race, gender, sexuality, earnings, age, and disabilities.
