Shades of abuse

A new Welsh social marketing campaign is trying to show men how more "accepted" forms of sexual harassment can add up to make women feel threatened and abused:




According to The Drum, the It all adds up campaign "aims to generate debate about gender inequality by challenging the conscious and subconscious attitudes which can lead to the normalisation, acceptance and tolerance of violence towards women".

The campaign was created by Manchester's Access for Llywodraeth Cynulliad Cymru (The Welsh Assembly Government). There's a site, too, at onesteptoofar.org.

The Drum quotes the Access's Managing Director as saying:

"Essentially we’re looking at changing behaviour which has been instilled through years of upbringing, society and the media, this is very tough - it could take years to change attitudes, but it’s great that the Welsh Assembly Government has acknowledged there is an issue and are tackling it head on.

"I believe we’ve come up with a great campaign which highlights the problem in a very simple, none preaching or judgemental way and because there will be research conducted pre and post campaign, I'm interested to see what impact this will have.”

Let's hope it helps, although I wonder if the exaggerated harassment situations will work against it. Generally, when you vilify people in social marketing, it is easy to turn them off and lose your intended audience. In this spot especially, all the guys harassing the woman are really obvious jerks. (Either that, or Wales is still in the Neolithic.)



As an ordinary man who has to ask himself if this compliment was inappropriate, or if that joke made someone feel uncomfortable, I would have preferred an approach that was less about obvious villains and more about the ingrained (and sometimes instinctive) sexism that threatens the safety and confidence of women in a supposedly gender-equal environment. It should be about "nice guys" taking a hard look at behaviour they take for granted, and maybe even seeing it through someone else's eyes.

We will never live in a non-gendered world (thank God!), but this ad — while heartfelt — feels more like it's going to make people hate the obvious pigs even more while letting the subtler ones stay in denial.