New Project: Shequal Podcast

The Meaningful Social Club is thrilled to announce our latest collaborative project. Our social media agency has been engaged by shEqual and Women’s Health Victoria on a very exciting project to promote gender equality in advertising in Australia.

WHV is a statewide women’s policy, health promotion, advocacy and support service with a proud history of over 29 years. They are an independent, feminist, not for profit organisation. They advocate and build system capacity for a gender approach to health that reduces inequalities and improves health outcomes for women.

shEqual is an initiative of Women’s Health Victoria and is the first coordinated effort in Australia to promote gender equality and address the drivers of violence against women in the advertising setting.

The mission of shEqual is to raise industry and public awareness, reinforce positive behaviours, and empower people to take action in shaping how women are represented in the stories we tell and consume.

Recently shEqual engaged Kantar to conduct a review to support a creative cultural revolution by demonstrating progressive portrayals of gender in advertising. The report identified the Australian culture as the context for where ads are created. It also showed that Australia is behind the rest of the world in demonstrating positive portrayals in advertising, and that while Australia is doing well in demonstrating presence of gender across 59 ads out of 2,500 that ranked highly across marketing impact and cultural influence, there is room for growth in how personality and perspective were represented. The reported demonstrated case studies with positive portrayals in advertising where ROI improved.

shEqual briefed a selection of Melbourne Social Media Agencies to come up with proposals to present this research to the public and to the advertising industry to effect change. The Meaningful Social Club was chosen to proceed with this project and we will be releasing an educational podcast to present the findings, which launches in late July 2023.

We are so excited to be able to share more about this project over the coming weeks. Be sure to keep following us on social media.