Welcome to the second in our new series of articles showcasing the very best of non-profit and development campaigns from around the world. Last week we shared with you the powerful billboard campaign from Breast Cancer Care in the UK that captured women’s bodies post cancer treatment.
This week we bring to you a shocking campaign created for UN Women, the United Nations office concerned with the rights and livelihoods of women and girls. Women have made great strides towards equality around the world over the past decades but for many women not a great deal has changed. Women continue to make less money, have greater difficulty accessing education and affordable healthcare whilst many countries continue to limit women’s civil rights.
UN Women set out on a mission to emphasise the inequality between men and women in many parts of the world through a new poster campaign. This startling clever campaign uses the all too common Google search engine to display the most common searches associated with different terms such as “women cannot”, “women need to” and “women shouldn’t”. The results are stark, shocking and reveal the true extent of sexism and discrimination against women.
As you can see from the images, the suggested text range from the outlandish denials of basic human rights for women to tired stereotypes. None of the information in the campaign has been altered and all of the suggested answers are simply a result of the most popular search terms on Google. This is what many people around the world continue to believe about women.
“The ads are shocking because they show just how far we still have to go to achieve gender equality. They are a wake up call, and we hope that the message will travel far,” adds Kareem Shuhaibar, copy writer.
UN Women hopes the campaign will kickstart a debate about women’s position in society. What do you think of the campaign? Has it made you reconsider how women should be treated in modern society? Let us know in the comments.
