In recent years, there has been a large rise in ‘femvertising’ - adverts and branding that seek to promote female empowerment or feminist ideals – but is this advertising helping spread the issues feminism faces or trivializing them and capitalizing off the movement.   

 

Advertising has been capitalizing on messages of feminism and female empowerment to sell products to women for a long period of time, but in recent years, with the rise of the online feminism movement, advertising has adapted to maximize the new market for pro-feminist and feminist message advertising and branding to make profit from consumers who subscribe to these viewpoints. Within feminism, there is now much debate over whether this ‘femvertising’ aids or hinders the feminist movement.  

 

Those that argue for the benefits of advertising with feminist messages have often suggested it assists spreading the ideals of feminism to a wider audience and de-stigmatizes these viewpoints, as feminism has often faced backlash for its views. The menstrual product company ‘Always’ launched a campaign in 2014 with the hashtag #LikeAGirl, which aimed to reduce stereotypes around women and has now reached nearly 70 million views on YouTube – this supports the argument that empowering advertising can reach a large audience and help further the cause of feminism. A YouGov poll in 2018 found that only 34% of women said yes when asked if they would call themselves a feminist, highlighting the stigma and negative perceptions that the movement still faces, as when asked whether they believed in gender equality the agreement was much higher. Although ‘femvertising’ is ultimately being used for profit, it seems to help showcase issues of feminism and why they need to be fought, thus furthering the feminist cause. 

 

However, many feminists have criticized this advertising, suggesting that it exploits the struggles of women for profit and does very little to solve the problems it is capitalizing on. So many modern companies have used ‘femvertising’ to attract female audiences, and yet still only 41 of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. This seems to suggest that much of ‘femvertising’ is a shallow grab for money, as women are still excluded and marginalized in many areas of society despite the alleged support of these companies. Furthermore, ‘femvertising’ usually only focuses on the more attractive, palatable issues that feminism fights, and leaves out the darker more gruesome issues such as domestic violence and sexual assaults which disproportionately affect women and girls and should also receive this wide-spread recognition.  

 

In conclusion, although theoretically ‘femvertising’ can help de-stigmatize feminism to a mainstream audience, the companies that put forward this advertising often still have a long way to go in regards to how they actively aid gender equality and feminist issues.