Scenes which play on gender stereotypes have now been banned in the UK, as a December announcement from Britain’s advertising regulator comes into effect. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority said in a statement that it will also ban ads that connect physical features with success in the romantic or social spheres; assign stereotypical traits to boys and girls, such as bravery for boys and tenderness for girls; suggest that new mothers should prioritize their looks or home cleanliness over their emotional health; and mock men for being bad at stereotypically “feminine” tasks, such as vacuuming, washing clothes or parenting. With the new guidelines, Britain will join countries like Belgium, France, Finland, Greece, Norway, South Africa and India, which have laws or codes of varying degrees and age that prevent gender discrimination in ads. Norway has had a law prohibiting sexism in ads since 1978. Companies are also reckoning with the problem of sexism in advertising by themselves too. In 2017, Unilever partnered with UN Women and a host of major corporations including Google, Johnson & Johnson and Mars, to create the Unstereotype Alliance, which seeks to educate people on how advertising perpetuates biases.

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