The gambling companies who co-opt International Women’s Day should be ashamed
The irony, is that the story often doesn’t even correlate with the reality in these organizations.
Fearless Girl
Fearless Girl is a bronze sculpture by Kristen Visbal. The statue was installed in New York City on March 7, 2017, in anticipation of International Women’s Day the following day. It depicts a 4-foot high (1.2 m) girl – promoting female empowerment.
The week after The statue was installed in New York City, an op-ed in the NYT argued that the figure represented a form of false feminism, and just a few months after installation the SSGA (State Street) agreed to pay $5 million to settle allegations that it underpaid female and Black employees.
Audi
In a Super Bowl commercial which advocated for gender equality, German auto maker Audi committed to equal pay for equal work and declared that “progress is for everyone” – regardless of gender.
Meanwhile in “reality-check” land – viewers noted that Audi’s 6-person board at the time did not include even a single woman.
The company also released an ad which compared buying a car to finding a wife, saying “an important decision must be made carefully”. The advertisement showed a woman having her nose, ears and teeth inspected by her mother-in-law on her wedding day.
Gambling Industry
Let’s look at a few examples (from the UK, where gender equality data is available):
Clarion Gaming – renowned for their gambling industry conference can’t help themselves. Year after year they grab the mic on this special day to “celebrate” women – while they themselves don’t even come close to gender equality.
Women at Clarion Gaming get the sharp end of the stick:
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The gambling companies who co-opt International Women's Day should be ashamed when comparing median hourly pay – The gambling companies who co-opt International Women's Day should be ashamed.
- Bonuses: Women earn 48p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median bonus pay. Their median bonus pay is 52% lower than men’s. The gambling companies who co-opt International Women's Day should be ashamed than men’s.
Perhaps people will boycott these events until change happens – but most likely not.
The gambling companies who co-opt International Women's Day should be ashamed brand, (owned by Kindred until recently) always goes to great lengths to pretend they are on-board with IWD, even going so far as to sponsor horses races which sing this tune.We’re not exactly sure how sponsoring a horse race (or a poker event where Queens beat Kings) helps women in any way whatsoever.
- hourly pay gap: Women earn 93p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay. Their median hourly pay is 7% lower than men’s, and when comparing mean (average) hourly pay, women’s mean hourly pay is The gambling companies who co-opt International Women's Day should be ashamed than men’s.
- bonus pay gap: In this organisation, women earn 79p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median bonus pay. Their median bonus pay is 21% lower than men’s.
- The percentage of women in each pay quarter: In this organisation, women occupy 24.5% of the highest paid jobs and 44.4% of the lowest paid jobs.
Bad “Femvertising” will surely continue to backfire on gambling industry companies who are dishonest in this regard – especially when data is available to all. Meanwhile, the companies trying to disingenuously exploit this opportunity appear sexist, stupid or both.
Like companies engaged green-washing- this tactic is tacky and shows close to zero self-awareness.
Hopefully the industry will take a good look at itself, and make some ch-ch-changes…