Sexist advert denigrates Dutch women and men
This just in! It features a woman doing an invisible pole dance and reads “Manipulate your manager” and then, roughly “Serious about moving up in your career? Register for the FD career challenge ’09!”
Women are complete idiots and have to use their bodies to climb up the ladder of success and all managers are of course all men (and straight!) and have no brains. Ouch. Looking forward to finding out who came up with this one.
The FD is the Netherlands’ top financial paper, which basically is stooping pretty low with this one. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the press is going to say. I’d also like to say that I am surprised social networking site LinkedIn agrees with this.
You’ll hear more from us on this.
I clicked the online version away somewhere today when I was working (the girl dances!), but after seeing this photo from a shocked Dutch girlfriend on Twitter, I put lunch on hold and had to write this up.
(Tip and photo: Jacqueline)
The ‘dancing’ banner even makes it worse. What a FD fluke!
Fluke is a good thing, but I understand what you’re trying to say :)
Thanks for your fast posting and happy to see my picture here.
Typisch geval van witte boorden criminaliteit/
A typical case of white collar criminality
I am reading this completely differently: the “serieus hogerop’ is meant to counter the – bad alternative – ‘manipulate your manager’ as a brainless woman. (as in: if you are serious about making promotion and don’t want to sleep your way to the top, then you come to these days). I do agree it is somewhat awkwardly done though.
I’m with Isabelle, it’s the other way around: don’t wiggle your arse and hope it ‘ll get you somewhere, instead choose the serious path.
Not a good advert though, it’s silly and and far too ambiguous.
Whoa, overreact much? Has feminism grown that desperate that even tongue-in-cheek references to female stereotypes are fair game? If that is the case, might I suggest some more worthwhile targets for you to pour your righteous anger towards? Start with the recent Heineken walk-in-fridge commercial if you’d like. If you’d be really genuine you’d also throw a fit about the tongue-in-cheek use of male stereotyping there.
Sad. Whatever the meaning, the fact that it could be misconstrued is a bit of proof that the business world is behind the times here (refer to statistics for the rest of the proof). Saw something on ‘assertive training’ recently–something one heard about decades ago in North America. It’s the fine line between the non-puritanical and the embarrassingly tactless. Not to worry though, any group of females that can have their children with no epidural, at home–let’s just say, you’d better not mess with Dutch women. Now, about the kids coming home for lunch…
the horror… I rather stick with the nerdy type of women. And besides that: are all men manager or are all managers men? just curious…
@Barry The Heineken commercial is absolutely terrible and unrealistic, that’s why it ‘works’. It implies everybody’s a Sex in the City idiot, heterosexual and beer oriented. But it doesn’t imply women have to (insert verbs) to move on up.
So I agree!
[…] to find out why they would back an advert like this. Just like one of the people commented in our first attempt at grasping this campaign, the point remains “don’t wiggle your arse and hope […]
[…] doen, wat denk je dan dat er gebeurt? Had je verwacht dat er ambitieuze professionals zouden gaan bloggen over je advertentie? Heb je daar rekening mee gehouden? En heb je ook maar één seconde erbij stil […]
It’s meant to be ironic, isn’t it, just to get attention?
Or perhaps not, now that I’ve seen how long ago it was published!