Where are Female Empowerment Brands on Dobbs?

Mostly, AWOL

It’s been almost 2 years since that the Supreme Court decided women will no longer have a constitutional right to an abortion. Since that time, we have seen other rights become endangered, including the right to keep one’s medical records private and the right to access contraception. All with detrimental—and sometimes even deadly—outcomes.

Soon after the Supreme Court draft was leaked, dating apps like OkCupid and Bumble, as well as progressive brands like Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia, came out with a statement in support of women’s reproductive rights. Other companies without a direct marketing link to women took more tangible actions, such as Lyft and Uber claiming they will cover legal fees for drivers, and Citigroup stating they will pay for their Texas employees to travel to receive healthcare.

And now?

In an age of purpose marketing (or more often purpose washing), we have seen few brands take a stand. This is particularly galling when you think of this in terms of companies that have built their brand on empowering women.

Dove, whose “Real Beauty Campaign” helped parent company Unilever grow the brand from $2.5 billion to $4 billion, put out a post on Instagram with Drew Barrymore encouraging young girls not to use skincare products.

Dove had an opportunity to support women.

They chose to fight competitors, instead.

Sure, that’s an issue. But it’s an issue for high-end brands sold at Sephora. Tweens are not buying drugstore brands like Dove.

Sports giant Nike, also absent, has been claiming the mantle of caring about women since the 1990s when their “If You Let Me Play” commercial included the line “If you let me play sports, I will be less likely to get pregnant before I want to.”

A few companies did come out with ads showing women in typically male roles, like Ford Motor Company’s “Dear Car Girl,” or women overcoming adversity, like Kotex’s #ProgressFeelsLike, which at least had a sense of fighting spirit to it.

But it’s simply not enough.

Women have not only lost our bodily autonomy. We have not achieved equity on so many levels.

A video about empowerment is nice, but it’s not enough.

(click video for TikTok)

For two decades, I have studied how companies have increasingly connected their brands to causes, and how they have benefitted from these associations. An early example, from the 1980s, was the American Express/Lee Iacocca campaign that raised money to restore the Statue of Liberty. More recently, companies have embraced purpose-driven marketing, a term that covers everything from complying to government climate regulations to raising money for breast cancer through product sales. 

But by now, connecting to causes through product sales is no longer enough.  Millennial and Gen Z consumers are demanding that brands embed their values in ways that are more political and more activist. Companies across the country were successfully pressured to respond to the “bathroom bill” in North Carolina in 2016. Since then, they have had to respond to bills restricting voting rights in Georgia as well as  the murder of Floyd in Minneapolis. 

Each new blow to democracy and equal rights raises a stronger call for brand activism. To answer that call, companies must get beyond window dressing to social impact. The days of slapping a ribbon on a product and claiming a company cares are quickly disappearing as consumers—especially social media savvy Gen Zers who are looking for corporations to act—call out companies for virtue signaling. Femvertising—blanketing brands in female empowerment for corporate profits—without political activism will backfire. 

Nothing is more empowering for women than control of their own bodies. Any brand that trades on caring about women has an obligation to be in this fight. That means communicating support for women’s healthcare in your advertising, coming out with a company policy statement, creating tangible ways in which you will support your employees, giving employees time off to protest and paid time off to travel to get an abortion. If you really care for women, now is the time to prove it.