Unga vuxnas attityd till femvertising och femwashing : En kvantitativ studie om feministiska budskap i marknadsföring

Sammanfattning: Consumers and the society as a whole are increasingly demanding companies to take their social responsibility and work actively for gender equality. Companies have therefore begun to use feminist messages in their advertising, also known as femvertising. Femvertising canbe described as advertising that strives to challenge norms about gender roles and body ideals, as well as empower women to achieve gender equality. If companies are not perceivedas genuine in their femvertising and use feminist messages to increase their sales, this can be classified as femwashing. The aim of this study is to examine young adults’ attitude towards femvertising and femwashing. Thus, young adults’ general attitude, the correlation between attitude towards femvertising and femwashing, and also which factors that can affect young adults’ attitude are investigated. Based on previous research, seven hypotheses were formulated. The data collection method for this study was a quantitative digital survey. There sult shows that young adults generally have a positive attitude towards femvertising and a negative attitude towards femwashing. The correlation between attitude towards femvertising and femwashing can be considered as strong. Gender, political opinion and identification as a feminist or not are factors that can influence young adults’ attitude towards femvertising and femwashing. Specifically, women, left-wing sympathizers and feminists tend to be more positive towards femvertising and more negative towards femwashing, compared to men, right-wing sympathizers and non-feminists. The result also shows that women are more positive to femvertising and more negative to femwashing because they tend to be both feminists and left-wing sympathizers to a greater extent than men. Based on theory about gender in the media, postfeminism and advertising, the result is analyzed and discussed.