1.4.3 ms rose durey
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1.4.3 ms rose durey
- 1. We object: changing structures and institutions to challenge the objectification of women Rose Durey, Policy and Health Promotion Manager
- 2. What is objectification? • When a woman’s sexual parts or functions are separated from her as a person, as if they’re capable of representing the women as whole
- 3. Source: National Organization for Women (2007)
- 4. Source: National Organization For Women (2007)
- 5. Source: National Organization for Women (2007)
- 6. Impact of objectification on women • Shame, anxiety, self-disgust • Eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression • Poorer sexual health From studies analysed in the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualisation of Girls (2010)
- 7. Impact of objectification on women Women who adopt an objectified standard for their appearance are: • more likely to be smokers • more likely they are to have poor motor performance • less likely to participants in physical activity
- 8. Source: National Organization for Women (2007)
- 9. Source: National Organization for Women (2007)
- 10. Source: National Organization for Women (2007)
- 11. Impact of objectification on others Women and men exposed to objectifying images are more accepting of: • rape myths • sexual harassment • sex role stereotypes • interpersonal violence
- 12. Brut Code #85: Spot and share Source: Tankard Reist (2010)
- 13. Source: Tankard Reist (2010)
- 14. Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) Code of Ethics • Objectification is considered as a subcategory of discrimination or vilification. • Community consultations indicate that respondents are highly sensitive to ads that objectify women (Advertising Standards Bureau, 2010).
- 15. We object! but what can we do about it? • Gender Impact Assessment: Links research on objectification with health costs and policy challenges. • Considered structures and institutions that promote objectification, including media and advertising.
- 16. Opportunities for influence • Code of Ethics - AANA Review • National Film and Literature Classification Scheme - Senate Inquiry • Regulation of Billboard and Outdoor Advertising - House of Representatives Inquiry • National Classification Scheme - Australian Law Reform Commission
- 17. Outcomes • Senate Inquiry: Classification scheme should be expanded to incorporate the objectification of women. • House of Reps Inquiry: ASB should reflect community standards. • AANA Code of Ethics: ‘that advertising or marketing communications should not employ sexual appeal in a manner which is exploitative and degrading of any individual or group of people’
- 18. Source: Tankard Reist (2010)
- 19. Source: The Australian, 17 July 2012
- 21. •
- 22. Putting the pieces together Strong evidence linking objectification with health outcomes.
- 23. Putting the pieces together Look outside the health and social policy sphere.
- 24. Putting the pieces together Develop an understanding of the relevant regulatory structures.
- 25. Putting the pieces together Present evidence in an engaging way that makes policy makers want to act.
- 26. Rose Durey 03 9664 9300 rose.durey@whv.org.au www.whv.org.au Like us on Follow us on
Editor's Notes
- The objectification of women permeates our culture and has serious physical and mental health impacts. In this presentation, I will explore Women’s Health Victoria’s advocacy in this area. Women’s Health Victoria is a women’s health promotion organisation based in Victoria, with the bulk of our funding coming from the Victorian government. Our vision is women living well – healthy, empowered and equal, and this vision has been one of the drivers of our work on objectification. We focus on issues such as body image, mental health and violence against women, and all of these issues intersect and are informed by the objectification of women.
- Objectification is the presentation of women’s bodies or body parts as sexual objects. Essentially, the process of objectification means that a woman’s entire being is identified with her body.
- So a woman might literally be turned into an object like a beer bottle or cocktail glass, as we see here. A woman might be dehumanised...
- ...like she is here, with a focus on only certain parts of her body. Or here...
- It’s as if only parts of her body are needed to represent the woman as a whole. Girls and women internalise a lot of these messages. They begin to see their bodies as objects and to assess themselves constantly on that basis.
- The objectification of women has serious physical and mental health implications. In 2010, the American Psychological Association published a report on the sexualisation of girls. This report is really the benchmark. It brings together the literature on objectification and sexualisation, and most of the examples I’m using today are drawn from that report. Objectification undermines women’s confidence and comfort in their bodies, leading to negative emotional consequences such as shame, anxiety and self-disgust. For example, young women who read fashion magazines rather than news magazines prefer to weigh less, are less satisfied with their bodies, more frustrated about their weight, more preoccupied with the desire to be thin, and they’re more afraid of getting fat than their peers (Turner, Hamilton, Jacobs, Angwood & Dwyer 1997). It is associated with eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression. Self-objectification occurs when women absorb the culture of objectification and perpetuate an objectified view of themselves. It has been linked to diminished sexual health among adolescent girls.
- There’s more. Women who adopt a more sexually objectified standard for their physical appearance are more likely to be smokers (Harrell 2002). The more girls view their bodies as objects and are concerned about their physical appearance, the more likely they are to have poor motor performance in activities like throwing a ball. So objectification impacts on physical performance. It limits the effectiveness of girls’ movements, the likelihood that they will participate in physical activity, and it also limits the health benefits they will get from being active (Young 1980; Fredrickson & Harrison 2005). We also know that objectification is broader than an individual health issue. It has an effect on the community. We see it in video clips, in ads, and it permeates social relationships as well. It informs and reinforces society’s attitudes towards women. We’ve got images of violence against women that are glamourised...
- And images of women submitting to men.
- These images reflect some disturbing elements of social relationships. And they have an effect. They impact on expectations about relationships between men and women.
- We know that both women and men exposed to objectifying images tend to be more accepting of rape myths, of sexual harassment, of sex role stereotypes, and interpersonal violence (Kalof 1999; Millburn, Mather & Conrad 2000; Ward 2002). And it’s everywhere.
- In 2010, we saw the Brut Code ads for Brut deodorant. The Brut Code is supposed to be a funny code for men to live by, but the ads were actually pretty offensive. Brut Code # 85 was called ‘Spot and Share’. I’m just going to read you the description of the ad that appeared in the Advertising Standards Bureau Case Report: ‘Three young men are loading surfboards in to a camper van next to the beach when one of them spots an attractive woman heading their way in a bikini. He makes the other two men aware of her, and they all make appreciative noises whilst the camera slowly pans up the woman’s body.
- The next scene shows a man sitting in a red convertible, playing a guitar and singing a song about spotting attractive women and sharing them with your mates. A man climbs out of the boot of the convertible and sprays himself with Brut deodorant, and the woman is shown sashaying past the men ... while they all admire her.’ The Advertising Standards Bureau noted that there is no relationship between the woman in the bikini and the product being advertised. And the Board considered that the woman was being objectified. But this isn’t the reason that the ad was altered. It was altered because it breached community safety standards. One of the men was sitting in the car without a seatbelt.
- We saw this ad and were pretty astonished that the Advertising Standards Bureau could only make a ruling on the fact that the man wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, because the Code of Ethics didn’t include objectification as separate grounds for consideration. This is despite the Advertising Standards Bureau’s own community consultations on sex in advertising which found that ‘Respondents were highly sensitive to ads which objectify women because in their view such ads reinforce and desensitise views about women as sexualised ‘objects’’. So the Bureau knew that this was an issue, but they couldn’t do anything about it.
- We at Women’s Health Victoria objected to this – we objected to the pervasiveness of objectification and the impact it has on women’s health. And we objected to the fact that there were no grounds to make changes even though a need had been identified by the Advertising Standards Bureau. We wanted to do something about it. One of the first things we did was to develop a Gender Impact Assessment on Body Image. This brought together the research on objectification, and links it to the health costs and policy challenges related to negative body image (available on our website). We also thought about the structures and institutions that promote objectification. And one of the obvious influences is the way women are represented in the media and advertising. So we started looking at how media and advertising were regulated. We knew that the advertising and media industry didn’t have a commitment to public health, so we appealed to policy makers and tried to link them to the research we knew was available.
- The regulation of advertising and media is incredibly complicated. There are lots of organisations and frameworks that intersect with one another. But we’ve had quite a few opportunities to present this research to policy makers because of a process of reform around media and advertising, such as those mentioned on the slide. - The Australian Association of National Advertisers have reviewed their Code of Ethics - The Federal Government announced a Senate Inquiry into the National Film and Literature Classification Scheme - House Committee Inquiry into the Regulation of Billboard and Outdoor Advertising - Australian Law Reform Commission review of the National Classification Scheme at the moment All of these Inquiries have included either body image, objectification of women, or sexualisation of girls in their terms of reference. So we made submissions to each of these Inquiries and recommended that objectification should be included in the classification scheme and in the Code of Ethics. And we were called as a witness to provide examples of how objectification is included in codes from other jurisdictions. All of our submissions are available on our website.
- Outcomes have been promising, but we still have a long way to go. The Senate Committee Inquiry into Film and Literature Classification recommended that the classification scheme should be expanded to encompass the objectification of women. And the Inquiry into Outdoor Advertising suggested that regular consultations on community standards should be undertaken, and that these should be reflected in the Advertising Standards Bureau’s decisions. Importantly, the Australian Association of National Advertisers now includes objectification in its Code of Ethics – ‘that advertising or marketing communications should not employ sexual appeal in a manner which is exploitative and degrading of any individual or group of people.’ This means that the Advertising Standards Bureau will be able to refer to objectification when they are assessing complaints. So, if we think back to the Brut ad…
- …the difference now is that the does not have to restrict an ad based on the lack of a seatbelt, but on the exploitative and degrading use of sexual appeal. This clause has been put to good use already.
- ShearEwe Livestock Services ‘takes the hard work out of hobby farming’ apparently. A complaint using the objectification clause was upheld.
- And here we have Wicked Campers – budget campervan rentals…
- – a complaint using the objectification clause was upheld. So, our advocacy, that resulted in changes to the Code of Ethics, has meant that these complaints can now be heard. To summarise…
- We found strong evidence that linked objectification with negative health outcomes for women.
- We looked outside the health sector and even outside of the sphere of social policy to identify the potential for structural influence.
- We developed an understanding of the structures regulating media and advertising.
- And we presented the evidence to decision makers in a way that was engaging and provided a solution. We still have a long way to go – for example, Advertising Standards Bureau rulings are voluntary, and Wicked Campers are apparently Australia’s biggest serial ignorers of their rulings.
- But what this story highlights is the potential for structural advocacy that challenges attitudes towards women. We hope that through these changes to the media and advertising regulatory environment, we will start to see more ads like this, for Lego, from the early 1980s. In time, if we see more and more ads like these and less and less ads like the ones I have shown you today, we may indeed see improvements to women’s health and wellbeing, and to the health and wellbeing of the wider community. Thank you.