New Rules From the Advertising Standards Authority Designed to Reduce Gender Stereotyping Ban First Ads
Two television ads, one for the Philadelphia cream cheese and the other for Volkswagen, have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in order to reduce gender stereotyping.
The new rules aim to help stop “limiting how people see themselves and how others see them and the life decisions they take”.
In the ad for Philadelphia, two dads are depicted eating launch from a circulated conveyor belt. They accidentally find their babies whisked away on it and one of them says: “let’s not tell mum”.
The Philadelphia cheese advert showed children being left on a restaurant conveyor belt (bbc.com)
This was seen as a harmful stereotype suggesting men were “incapable of caring for children and would put them at risk as a result of their incompetence.”
The ad for Volkswagen shows a sequence of scenes including a man and a woman in a tent on a sheer cliff face, two male astronauts, a male para-athlete and a woman sitting on a bench next to a pram. Text writes: “When we learn to adapt we can achieve anything.”
The VW ad showed a woman sitting with a pram as the eGolf car drives by (bbc.com)
This ad was considered sexist as the ad showed men engaged in adventurous activities and the female rock climber was “passive” because she was asleep, unlike her male counterpart, and the woman with the pram was depicted in a stereotypical caregiving role.
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