‘The Female Classifier’, an LLYC campaign championing women’s visibility

LLYC will launch ‘The Female Classifier’ campaign to mark 8M, International Women’s Day. Prominent women from 12 countries are speaking up on social media to reveal a semantic bias that was once a useful tool for them to make their way in various fields such as entrepreneurship, leadership, sports or culture, but now represents a hindrance.

According to the firm’s recent ‘Nameless Women’ report, gender is specifically mentioned in the media 2.3 times more often for stories about women. When mentions of the “Female Classifier” are stronger, the article is proportionally less likely to cite the woman’s own name. Such subordination depersonalizes and herds together women, while relegating them to a secondary and anecdotal role. The study also concluded that women remain underrepresented. The media published 2.5 times more news stories about men than women in the last year in spite of greater and better reporting because of the emergence of gender correspondents.

The campaign has mobilized more than 60 women as global ambassadors, all of whom are sharing graphics on their social media platforms with their photographs to contextualize the semantic subordination.

“Our firm belief at LLYC is that women’s visibility is a catalyst for equality. Journalism has an indispensable role to play in this evolution. We want this campaign to foster awareness and encourage both communication professionals and the social fabric to generate increasingly diverse and equitable spaces of visibility. This is one more step towards ensuring that women and their contributions are represented and valued in their own names,” explained Luisa García, Partner and COO at LLYC.