From tackling online bias and demanding better from AI engines to taking responsibility for our internal cultures and platforms, agencies, brands and media owners can play a meaningful role, writes LBB’s Laura Swinton

International Women’s Day is usually a time for the advertising and marketing world to share celebratory campaigns designed to empower women and girls, as well as platform the female talent that drives the business. But it’s also a time to pause and reflect to think about how far we’ve really come, as a business and as a society.

And in 2023, that makes for sobering contemplation. Misogyny isn’t going anywhere. Between brutal regimes cracking down on women’s freedoms, the global scourge of VAWG, and the – perhaps – surprising rolling back of women’s rights to bodily autonomy in countries like the United States, as well as the rather new and disturbing dynamics of online misogyny, this IWD we may not find ourselves where we’d hope to be.

Staying optimistic can be tough in the face of a news feed crammed with extremes of violence, from the scale of sexual assaults perpetrated by police officers in the UK to the cruel backslide on women’s freedoms in Afghanistan. Just as worrying, though, is the drip, drip, drip of misogyny online, via social media, where ideas perpetrated by the likes of jailed and dangerous influencer Andrew Tate find purchase with impressionable and desperate young minds (schools are reporting a surge of sexist abuse against both pupils and female teachers). And that optimism wavers further when one considers the sudden explosion of generative AI which appears to replicate the sexism of the Internet from which it draws its input. Text creator ChatGPT, from OpenAI, has been shown to create sexist performance reviews and even its CEO Sam Altman agrees that it has issues with bias. AI avatar-generating app Lensa has been shown to have a tendency to create nude avatars for female users – including children – and MIT Technology Review reporter Melissa Heikkiläarchive suggests a further intersection with race and ethnicity, finding women of Asian descent getting particularly pornified.

We’re barely in the foothills of AI and we’ve not yet seen what might arise from this intersection and interplay of ever more sophisticated social algorithms turning misogyny viral, in the very worst sense of the word, and seemingly unlimited, mindless content generation replicating the biases already baked into the internet. It’s tempting to despair and give up.

But brands and agencies may well have the tools and leverage to make a difference. Adland is packed with people who understand how ideas spread, how to nudge behaviours and who are immersed in the worlds of social media and new technology. Moreover, advertisers hold the money that can fund – or not fund – the business models of platforms and AI tools. And media owners, whether online, offline or a hybrid can take responsibility for how they shape the environments around us.

We want to know how the advertising community can use its expertise to mount a meaningful fightback for women that is more than just girlboss posturing.

Follow the Example Set By the Artists Fighting on the Streets and Online

It’s easy to get disheartened by the extremist rhetoric being spread on social media, but these platforms can still be used for good. Farima Moradnouri is director of finance and operations at Squeak E. Clean Studios and as an Iranian-American, she has seen the way that social media has empowered the disempowered and has been inspired by the artists and creatives in Iran who have used their creativity and platforms to galvanise global support behind a female-led uprising in recent months. So perhaps the first step for those in the industry is to think pragmatically and make the most of the tools and platforms that we do have at hand.

As an Iranian-American woman living in the US, seeing human rights stripped away has unfortunately been a big part of my life. In Iran, among the many rights stripped away from a country as a whole, women specifically, don’t have the right to choose what they wear, to sing, to dance in the streets, check into a hotel or travel without the permission of their husbands; the life of a woman is essentially considered half of their male counterparts in so many ways.

Over the last six months, there has been a female-started and led revolution aimed at winning back some of those basic human rights which gained the attention and support of a global audience. It has also brought attention to how fortunate we are to live in a country where those types of things are never an issue. In a way, the advertising and creative industries have so much power surrounding the messaging around these kinds of vital humanitarian issues.

Similarly, with women’s rights being challenged in the US and beyond, there have been a lot of brands who have addressed the subject, promoting their stance on a woman’s right to choose and fighting for that. If everyone uses their platforms to help spread information and create awareness, that is the most important first step to informing others of the current happenings and the consequences that follow.

Throughout the Iran Revolution, there have been many artists, creatives, and musicians that have used their platforms to create awareness and help be the voice of those whose voices have been silenced. Informing people and creating awareness by using platforms to spread news that isn’t covered elsewhere is one of the bigger actions we can take to gain attention and continue to inform.

In Iran, they are detaining protesters and giving out prison and execution sentences for people fighting for basic human rights. In the US, we don’t get exposed to the harsh reality of this as much. Unfortunately, it is largely because it is happening in parts of the Middle East, where, to many, these types of events just seem like ‘another day.’ Throughout this revolution, people have used extremely creative ways to build awareness. They have choreographed dances to famous songs and created videos to catch the attention of a global audience with a unique point of view. One Iranian artist, Shervin Hajipour, created the song ‘Baraye’ at the beginning of the revolution that became the song of this revolution and so globally known and celebrated that it won a Grammy for ‘Best Song for Social Change.’

That type of creativity is what we need to harness to utilise the power of this industry to help inspire change.

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