UAE ads to ditch woman-as-homemaker theme

Dubai: Guidelines are to be issued next year to help UAE advertisers move away from from using “gender stereotypes” in their campaigns and TV commercials.

These are to be issued by the Advertising Business Group, an entity that represents both advertisers/marketers as well as advertising agency representatives.

What this means is that advertisers will think twice before featuring women in their ads as typical stay-at-home types, typically using images where they are taking care of the children and cooking dishes or washing clothes with a perpetual smile on their face.

Not just in TV commercials or print, these stereotypes are there on digital ads as well. This image of the woman as only a homemaker has been around since the dawn of advertising. But now, countries and their advertising associations are having to move away from perpetuating such images.

“The UK has issued such guidelines and it’s high time advertisers in this region too followed the new normal,” said Alex Malouf, member of the board at Advertising Business Group. “We need such guidelines to “un-stereotype” advertising for the region.”

False impressions

Why are such guidelines important? Because they tend to portray something that’s totally out of tune with the times, when women make up such a sizeable part of the workforce in most markets. Given this reality, to put up images of women limited to being homemakers and waiting on their husband’s every need is starting to grate with audiences.