Abstract:

While most companies implement HR and CX policies that try to fix gender inequality, non-written corporate/organisational cultures often operate as a barrier slowing down or even hurting the equality-goal. Brands on the other hand seem to be making a great contribution to create a more equal society in terms of gender by reviewing their marketing strategies, at least when it comes to target definition and the content of advertising. Traditional ?women? categories, such as home care or personal care, have started talking to men, or at least portraying them in their advertising, and vice versa. Nonetheless, the question of whether this is a proactive initiative by brands or just a reaction to wider social changes is still unanswered: do brands want to actually lead or fight in the first line of attack in the gender equality quest, or are they just following and mimicking social changes in order to stay relevant? The dialectic perspective will claim that it is a little bit of both, but that doesn?t lessen the credit brands deserve for this; even if they are just mimicking social changes, by doing so they bring visibility and legitimacy to those changes.