Automated sexism: Google searches reveal misogyny

25 : 10 : 2013 Advertising : UN Women : The Athena Women

Dubai – UN Women is the United Nations body that works towards gender equality and the empowerment of women. Its latest advertising campaign, created by Memac Ogilvy, the Dubai branch of global marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather, uses Google searches to highlight sexism.

The search engine’s predictive text is completely automated – an unbiased algorithm that shows the most commonly searched phrases. When ‘women should’ is entered into the search box, phrases such as ‘stay at home’ and ‘be slaves’ are the first to come up. Entering ‘women shouldn’t’ brings up ‘vote’, ‘work’ and ‘have rights’ as potential search results.

‘When we came across these searches, we were shocked by how negative they were and decided we had to do something with them,’ says Christopher Hunt, art director of the creative team in a press statement.

The resulting posters create a powerful message that the fight for women’s rights has yet to be won.

For more on women becoming a force to be reckoned with, read our Athena Woman macrotrend.

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