Are you (still) being exposed to strange ads just because you are a woman?

Rose* was browsing Facebook last year when she noticed something unusual: an advertisement with the tagline “donate your Asian eggs.” Rose was taken aback by the level of demographic detail advertisers were able to infer from just her Facebook profile.



In a previous article on Chupadados practices, we had already demonstrated how pregnant women are profitable for the advertising business. Now it seems that even before we get pregnant, some eggs can be valuable to advertisers. In the U.S, eggs that fertilization clinics classify as "Asian" are considered rare, costing more than twice as much as eggs of other ethnicities, to the point that several young people with that profile sell their eggs to pay for university.



The fact is it doesn't matter if you are, or have any desire to be a mother. Every stage of motherhood, from contraception to conception, gestation, childbirth, puerperium and childbearing, remains a topic to be exploited by advertisers while addressing bodies they consider to be female.



Another young woman, Hilary*, started seeing ads on Facebook for baby products like diapers and toys. Most of her friends from her religious community are married and starting to have children, but she says she doesn’t have plans to have children anytime soon. “I’m starting to get ads for baby products, which doesn’t apply to me at all,” says Hilary. “It’s like Facebook is trying to tell me what I’m interested in, which is weird.”



A popular news anchor had a similar experience, tweeting: "Facebook ads are there to remind women that from age 27-37, you ought to be having kids." She included the screenshot below of the explanation Facebook provides for why she was seeing an ad about play mats for babies. The explanation points out that she may be seeing this ad because the advertiser chose to display it to women between the ages of 27 and 37 who live or were recently in the U.S.



This situation is common. Through a partnership with the "Who Targets Me" project, we had the opportunity to access a database of targeted advertisements Facebook. Although the focus of the project is on political campaigns, the browser extension they developed collects all types of ads published for about 7,000 people who installed the tool, primarily in the UK. By searching the database to find ads for baby products, we hoped to determine whether they were targeted primarily at women.



Baby-clothing advertisements:







Advertisements from stores selling all types of baby products and gears:







Baby care advertisements:



We also searched for ads containing the word "fertility" and the results were similar. In both cases, the database confirmed that these ads were viewed more often by women, suggesting that advertisers on Facebook more often chose to target women with these ads. We did not find any ads in the database about babies or fertility targeting only men.







"I changed my gender on Facebook (for family only) to escape the baby/sperm donor ads", tweeted another woman. That comes as no surprise: even if we have moved past what should be considered ancient sexist ads, like the ads below that suggest women's work is limited to household activities:



Sources: Envisioning the American Dream and Mad Men Art



... And that some might think that advertising like these have become a little bit more gender-neutral:







The truth is, if these ads only target women, there isn't much difference from the past, as they are reinforcing gender roles that have been questioned by the several feminisms. Gender-based advertising or ads that reinforce gender stereotypes are not a recent problem. For decades, patriarchal notions that extend to the market have objectified the woman's body, associating certain appearances with notions of beauty or sexuality, in many cases prescribing what physical or psychological health and illness look like. But when this happens under the guise of neutrality or objectivity, gender stereotypes and sexism become even more dangerous, hidden in the obscure logic of the algorithm.



Sometimes, similarities with the past are even more striking. A woman reported to us how outraged she was by the tone of the handbag advertisement below.



Source: Chase&Sanborn Ad



"This advertising is based on the assumption that the husband must authorize the purchase, that women have no autonomy over their expenses and jokes about campaigns to report violence against women. This is an extremely offensive advertisement", she says. "I am part of a number of support groups for women in abusive relationships, this [ad] could even indicate that I am experiencing abuse. [Were I] in such a situation, viewing that kind of ad would trigger an even worse feeling than the one that I already felt," she adds. It is indeed really sad to note that contemporary ads still use sexist jokes that underestimate gender based violence. This one really took us back to the 1950s, where people thought it was fun and ethical to portray violence against women to sell coffee.



Stories of discomfort are frequent. “Dear @facebook: the only time I’ve ever been pregnant I miscarried. Thanks for the stream of ads for new moms & women who hate their bodies,” tweeted Rachael, whom we later interviewed. As a dietitian who works with people who have eating disorders, she is attuned to the ways in which these messages can be harmful. “I feel particularly concerned about how these type of ads affect those prone to eating disorders & disordered eating,” says Rachael. She typically blocks those advertisers who are deliberately playing on women’s insecurity and self-hate, or who engage in body shaming.



Source: Envisioning the American Dream



Any similarity among these ads is not incidental, time has passed, standards have changed from "gain weight" to "lose weight", but the message "be ashamed of your body", "buy this to change that", remains the same.



There are also multiple reports of women who seem to be targeted on Facebook for depression or anxiety. “Facebook shows me mostly ads about sadness,” tweeted Charlene. When we interviewed her, she said that the ads she most often sees are “those horrendous ‘counselling’ ones with the crying girl.” A number of women confirmed that they are shown ads with pictures of sad, weeping women.



Fonte: Nervine advertisement



What has changed are the tools that are being used to reinforce misleading and even dangerous narratives around gender, bodies, sexuality, and motherhood. These sexist advertisements were scattered in magazines and newspapers in past decades. Today they are disseminated through algorithms that the advertisers themselves might not understand.



