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Advertising still too pale and male - Loeries judge

Cape Town – Challenging the identity of female stereotypes in the creative world of advertising is not easy considering the sector is still male dominated, according to a Loeries judge.

Women make up only about 20% of top management and 32% in senior management in South Africa, according to a 2015 report by the Commission for Employment Equity. White men make up 51.5% of top management in the transport, storage and communications sector.

READ: Pace of transformation in SA remains slow

“It is absolutely still male dominated,” said Suhana Gordhan, the creative director at FCB Johannesburg, the top ranked agency at last year’s Loeries.

“It has transformed a lot since I first started,” said Gordhan, who won a Loerie Grand Prix for her role in Nando’s Last Dictator Standing advert while at agency Black River FC.

'Transformation is slow'

Gordhan, who entered the industry in 2001, said she has experienced a lot of discrimination during her career.

“It was pretty much a boys’ club,” she told Fin24. “There just wasn’t enough women in there. It has moved on in many ways, but not in a dramatic enough way.

“The fact that there are still not enough female executive creative directors to look up to tells you a lot,” she said. “A lot of them leave the industry as soon as they want to have kids, because the industry doesn’t sustain those kinds of women.

“Just being on the judging panels, you can see from the photographs we took (see in tweet below), there’s always a bunch of men and few women. I think out of 32 judges, there’s about 10 female,” she said.

“Transformation in this industry is slow and it needs to happen in a bigger way for women of colour and for people of colour in the industry,” she said.

AUDIO: Suhana Gordhan talks to Fin24 about failure, being a judge and women in the advertising industry

Responsible female leader

“I feel very responsible and very conscious of being a woman,” said Gordhan. “Not because I’m being discriminated, but (because I feel) responsible in the way I mentor other women and the messages I send out.

“I remember joining the industry and thinking I couldn’t be a feminist … because you just tend to do the work people want and sometimes that means perpetuating stereotypes,” she said. “Now there is a consciousness that allows us to not do that anymore.

“Now, it’s about being conscious about the work we sell out there and making sure that we talk to women. We need to decide how we do that,” she said. “They are the main buyers in a household.”

She said women leaders often like to wear the men’s shoes to mimic their leadership style. “We don’t need to do that,” said Gordhan. “We have our own natural skills that we can harness.”

She said it’s very easy for women to play the victim or martyr role, which they should not do. “We need to find our own voices and be comfortable in it.”

Focus on women a good sign

This year, Cannes (the global competition for creative agencies) introduced the Glass Lion to recognise work that addresses issues of gender inequality or prejudice, through the conscious representation of gender in advertising.

“It’s the right time for it,” said Gordhan. “It needs a joint effort from everybody and not just women. It needs to have the voices of men as well, which is something I think is really good, compared to feminism of old, where it was a radical one voice thing.

“We do have a lot of men in this industry who are very progressive and interested in having women at the table and hearing what they have to say,” she concluded. “It’s just that there’s not enough of us (women).”

The Loeries Creative Week is currently taking place in Durban and will see over 2 900 entries from across Africa and the Middle East being judged in 21 categories by over 160 of the best local, and international minds in the creative industry. It will culminate in the Loeries Africa & the Middle East Awards on Saturday and Sunday.

More photos from Gordhan's judging session:

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