At BodyMatters we are thrilled to have signed Collective Shout‘s Corporate Responsibility Pledge which sets out our commitment, as a small business, to be respectful of women and girls in advertising and marketing, products and service development.
The pledge is a “no brainer” for us given that these are the very things we advocate for! However signing the pledge is something that Collective Shout asks you to consider, if you are in a appropriate position of responsibility “in a spirit of respect and responsibility towards the consumer and the broader society; and of recognition of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination and UN Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
The pledge itself should not be difficult for businesses and organisations to sign. The commitment itself is to refrain from:
- Publishing images or messages that objectify women or girls; carrying products, or provide services, that involve such images or messages.
- Carrying products, or provide services, that encourage children to think physical attractiveness is necessary to social success.
- Carrying products for girls, promote products to girls, or provide services to girls that bear any mark, brand or logo associated with pornography or the systematic objectification of women.
- Carrying products for girls, or provide services to girls, that resemble or reflect any product or service habitually used by women to enhance their sexual appeal.
And of course, to rectify any breaches of these.
Encouraging corporate responsibility is something that many businesses aspire to and indeed invest in. It has been demonstrated to benefit both the business itself as well as the community. For example, according to the Australian Institute for Corporate Responsibility (AICR):
- Companies that actively manage and measure corporate responsibility outperform their peers on shareholder return by between 3.3% and 7.7%;
- 53% of jobseekers would like to work for a company with a corporate responsibility program, and 25% actively seek companies with such programs;
- Partnerships enhance staff morale, result in a more skilled workforce and access to new markets;
- Ethical and conscious investment plays an increasing role in the conduct of companies, especially public companies.
According to the AICR, there are seven specific areas of corporate responsibility:
- Environmental Sustainability – probably the area of most pressing public concern, also the area with some of the greatest opportunities for action, from switching lights out and computers off to having products certified as Greenhouse Friendly and installing green energy generators.
- Human Rights – a broad and complex area of corporate responsibility, this is about companies’ ethical obligation to uphold the human rights of others, particularly because employment directly affects people’s quality of life.
- Community Engagement – enhancing a company’s working environment, and sustaining relationships and corporate reputation by working with and supporting the community.
- Workforce – making your company a place where people aspire to work by being flexible, promoting work/life balance and behaving ethically towards employees in the knowledge that it will generate productivity and loyalty.
- Socially Responsible Investment – investing either directly, by screening out investments in companies with practices you don’t want to support, or indirectly, by advising employees about superannuation companies with ethical investment options.
- Good Governance – where the board of directors helps structure, support and monitor a company’s CR initiatives, and where a company publicly reports on its CR performance.
- Addressing Systemic Disadvantage – investing time, resources and support in areas of the community that experience chronic disadvantage.
As aforementioned, the area that has attracted most exposure is around environmental sustainability, with concepts like carbon neutrality and earth hour being very much in vogue. How many images do you see businesses proudly showcasing to indicate an affiliation to environmental sustainability?
Isn’t it interesting that something as overt as the systemic devaluation of females in advertising- half the population- has not yet had a trademark symbol or image developed? Particularly when we consider, by contrast, just how many images we see regarding systemic disadvantage of females in all kinds of advertising. We all have mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, female friends. Yet we are bombarded with images in popular culture that degrade women. Collective Shout’s Corporate Responsibility Pledge is the first symbol of its kind that calls corporations to take a stand on this issue.
The Half The Sky movement identifies six issues of particular disadvantage that maintain the cycle of oppression of girls and women world wide. These are:
- Economic empowerment;
- Education;
- Forced prostitution;
- Gender based violence;
- Maternal mortality;
- Sex trafficking.
Which of these are, either directly or indirectly, a cause OR impact of the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture? Um- most! Does this not highlight just how paramount the Corporate Responsibility Pledge actually is?
If you see this issue as important, please circulate the pledge to anyone you know who is in a position of influence who may be willing and able to support this vital initiative.
