Thursday, March 15, 2012

This pretty powerful

At first you wonder what the hell is going on and it makes you a bit uncomfortable, but the pay off is great.

Not suitable for work, by the way.

Posted by Woody Hinkle

1 comment:

Mary Fletcher Jones said...

Well, I don't have a problem w/Ms. Gray. I just don't think she belongs in this campaign.

The message is maybe a little antiquated. We live in an era where women CEOS (like the President of the Ad Council who pulls down $800K+ and Oprah) are making big bucks. No one is saying that happens across the board but it is 2012 and the issue just isn't as serious as it was before. The discrepancy still exists but the trajectory is def. up and I don't think young prof's now go into careers assuming they will make less than their male peers. As was once true.

And a shock ad's not going to change that -- the people who don't care won't change and the people who do care don't care as much as this org thinks :)

But the most compelling part of the video is the first part -- her job choices. The facts are: women make less than men because women choose lower paying jobs (nursing, teaching) and less risky jobs that tend to pay more.

Women who take time to bear and raise children earn less b/c they are out of the workforce and have less experience (self included). That's the way it is. It's not necessarily ALL discrimination.

Yes, that exists. Yes, some pros who happen to be women get paid less than their peers who happen to be men. But people who happen to be taller get paid more than people who are shorter, too. At some point, you gotta just go to work and deal. There's a lot of other stuff to worry about.

I think a more powerful ad would look at the REAL forces behind the discrepancy. We have to own our choices.

I knew going into motherhood my career would suffer. I was willing to pay that price and a lot of women are. That means women are less visible at the top, right? Because we voluntarily step out of the work force. There are fewer of us, so yeah, maybe our full value is not always appreciated by every soul. But isn't it enough?

It's maybe not such an "issue" as this campaign might imply. Women have to take some responsibility for where women are today. As far as a public education campaign goes, this misses the mark. Think about the target audience. Is this appeal likely to work? No one who was on the fence about equal pay for equal work will be convinced by Ms. Gray. If they objectified women before, or saw women as less deserving of equal pay than man, this campaign will not change that personal belief they hold. It would have been far more convincing to show the facts, and maybe illustrate w/real people -- e.g. this neurosurgeon makes $, this one makes 25% less. To me, that would have been powerful. We've all seen porn. Maybe we haven't all seen the facts.

Anyway, it was fun to watch in a bad-kid way but that did not make it a good ad. In fact, as an ad, I think it was pretty bad. If I were a funder, I would be seriously p.o.'d

March 16, 2012 at 9:00 AM

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