Fashion industry think-tank Business of Fashion (BoF) is currently accepting applications for Future VOICES, a great initiative to find new talents under 30.
The competition is open to both men and women globally, though you wouldn’t know, based on the @bof Friday Instagram promotional post (reproduced here), which represents a series of mostly-blue male pictograms.
The post has, at time of writing, received 29 comments, including one by @jayhoup asking “Is this only for men? Shame.” and one by @gabrielle_runzer questioning “Where’s the women???”. @Daisyschofield posted some female emoji and “think you’re missing something”. I asked whether women could apply too, to which @bof said “of course”. BoF didn’t follow up when I asked why the asset only represents men.
This adds up to nearly 15% of comments pointing out that the asset is sexist. Maybe not sexist in intention, as I doubt whoever created it wanted to exclude women, but sexist in action.
Whatever the reason, the result is inherently misogynistic. It assumes that when seeing male pictograms, Instagramers will understand that the competition is open to all. It assumes male as the default setting.
Study after study shows that representation matters and that young women are less likely to apply for positions when they can’t see other women in the field. On the face of it, fashion performs better than most industry in terms of gender equality. Except that a lot of decision-making still sits with men.
Take American and British Vogue, ran by Anna Wintour and Alexandra Shulman. Both have been the subject of behind-the-scenes documentaries. In The September Issue and Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue, the editors-in-chief present their covers to the Condé Nast execs. In both cases, they are the only women in rooms filled with men.
Future VOICES, a partnership with Topshop, is a great initiative. Hopefully, it will help assuage another inequality issue: the fact that to start a fashion career, one often needs to intern, unpaid, which has a deterring effect for young people from many backgrounds.
In 2016, with an American election marked by sexism, the BoF asset might seem very tame. Some might excuse it because ultimately, BoF is achieving something good. However, not being sexist, the Donald Trump way, doesn’t mean that you’re not reproducing latent sexist ideas. BoF should know better than using an asset showing only men to call for applications.