Happy International Women's Day!
Here's something posted on the DigitalEve mailing list that I found encouraging. With all the women working with or using technology today, it's hard to believe so many sexist ads continue to be run. But here's a watchdog group that doesn't take sexist ads lying down (grrrrrr!). With their DisGraceful Awards, they embarass high-tech companies who should know better. So here it is and have a great day!

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High-tech Women Fight Sex-Driven Ads (3/7/2001)

Sex sells, but don't tell that to Sylvia Paull.

Paull is director of a prominent women's high-tech networking group,
GraceNet, that has made a mission of embarrassing software and Internet
industry companies that use cheap come-ons in their advertising
campaigns. For the past six months, Paull and GraceNet's nearly 1,200
members have trolled billboards, television and other advertising media for
sexually explicit messages that give women in high-tech a bad rap.

"So many ads often portray women as sex objects, and they have nothing
to do with the products they're selling," said Paull, who founded GraceNet
in 1997.

Using sexually explicit messages to sell products is hardly new, and these
companies aren't the first to get egg on their faces over marketing
campaigns. The "Simply Palm" campaign from Palm Computing two years
ago, which featured a naked woman in its attempt to sell its latest handheld
device, drew protests from the tech community and spurred the making of
several parody sites.

Taking up the renegade role, GraceNet plans to do its part to mitigate the
occurrence of sex-tinged advertising in the high-tech industry, which
increasingly is run and populated by women.

The nonprofit, named after tech pioneer Grace Hopper, has already pushed
three technology companies into yanking suggestive ads after it bestowed
on them its DisGraceful Award in Advertising, a monthly dishonor that was
first issued last September.

The group's latest target is IBM, which is running an ad promoting its
collaborative software, IBM Lotus Mindspan Solutions, in Knowledge
Management magazine. The two-page spread shows a man and a woman
separately waiting in an airport. The male executive is busy using his laptop,
with a caption that reads: "Just learned discounted cash flow techniques
with 40 other analysts." The young woman, dressed provocatively, is
working on a crossword puzzle. The text under her image says: "Just
learned a five-letter word for 'belly button.'"

Paull said the ad received the award because it suggests that women are
more suited to looking up synonyms for body parts, while men are more apt
to take advantage of IBM's e-learning solutions.

Those already lambasted for poor taste in advertising include digital color
company E-color, database company InfoUSA.com and e-mail marketer
TargitMail.com. The group's October award went to Lik Sang International,
a software company. Its ad depicted a young woman licking her lips, with
the caption: "We don't have young Japanese girls on sale right now, but we
do ship more than 300 products directly from Hongkong (sic)." The company
pulled the ad shortly after the award was announced publicly.

None of the targets of GraceNet's ire contacted for this story returned
phone calls.

The most satisfying coup for San Francisco-based GraceNet came in
January, Paull said, when InfoUSA.com yanked its ad in print publications
and fired the marketing team responsible for it following news of receiving
the award. InfoUSA.com published an ad showing a dominatrix cracking a
whip in an attempt to sell the company's database.

"There are a lot of women in high-tech now, and many ads assume that
there aren't," Paull said. "So many woman...are offended by these ads."

By Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com
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