Social equity has become an increasingly important issue with consumers in recent years, especially younger ones. With social and gender equity in advertising key touch points for reaching millennials and Gen X consumers, there are signs that progressive advertising has been on the rise. However, CreativeX’s analysis of CPG ad spend suggests that while brands’ ads feature women in progressive roles they are not promoting these as heavily as ads featuring women in traditional roles or ads showing men in professional environments.
The use of traditional gender roles in advertising has long been a topic of debate. The U.K. went so far as to ban gender stereotypes that are “likely to cause harm, or serious widespread offense” in 2019.