On March 17, 1997, the JCLU held a ceremony for the second Human Rights Advertisement Awards at the Kanda PensŽe Hall in Tokyo. The awards were given to three companies and one university. The ceremony included a lecture by Attorney Ms. Mizuho Fukushima, JCLU Board Member, on advertizing apropos gender equality. The following is a commentary on the awards by Shun Hashiba, JCLU Board Member in charge of the Human Rights Consulting Committee (HRCC), which organized the awards.

Award Winners

For the Second Annual Human Rights Advertisement Award, four ads were awarded from the Plus Section and none from the Minus Section.

1. 1. Kyoto Women's University: The University's ad appeals for equality of employment opportunity among female and male students, supporting women who are eager to work.
2. 2. Aderans: This company's ad is revolutionary in that it advocates that men should share in the household responsibilities. It asserts that with family cooperation, women are able to have more free time for hobbies, thus widening their view of life. Reading the ad from a woman's point of view, however, this ad seems to assume that the partners of these men are full-time "housewives." It is a pity that the standpoint of working women is not considered.
3. 3. Boehringer Ingelheim, Japan: Since this is an ad for an international firm, it is only natural that both sexes appear to have equal status. This characteristic made the ad prominent among the many ads that portray work places, because similar ads for Japanese companies tend to show men dealing with important work, with women as their assistants.
4. 4. Matsushita Electric: The company's ad characterizes a rather elderly man as an independent human being, instead of as an object of young people's care. We would like to see similar ads involving elderly women, as well.

On the Selection Process

The Second Annual Awards deal with ads published from January through December 1996. Looking back on our evaluations during the year, we find it delightful that our work in awarding Human Rights Advertisements has led to several improvements. For example, a certain airline has stopped using photographs of female crew serving male customers. Now, male customers no longer appear in the photos.

In addition, we have begun making advertisers pay attention to ads that seem problematic by sending them private letters. Fortunately, in many cases, advertisers earnestly explain their intentions in producing the ads and their awareness of discrimination against women. We value the response of those concerned and, through regular contact, intend to help firms publish good advertisements.

Three of the award-winning ads were selected by the equality of both sexes section, which were very seldom seen throughout the year. It is a shame that most ads featuring women continue to contain pictures implying the existence of fixed gender roles such as "men in the workplace, women at home" or "men in the managerial posts, women as their assistants." Nowadays, it is not unusual to see working women in responsible posts or men who are eager to engage in household affairs or raise children. Those who continue to produce ads which take for granted the unchanged gender roles should be criticized.

Moreover, we have continued to find ads which use naked women or women in swimming suits as eye-catchers. In these ads, female bodies are emphasized over the products, which have no relation to naked bodies or swimming suits. They are likely to maintain and promote the sexist consciousness in which women tend to be rated by men only on sex appeal. A February 1996 ad for Bifiten, a stomach medicine from Morishita Jintan, Ltd., exemplifies this phenomenon. The ad uses a picture of a women naked from waist to neck, revealing the roundness of her breasts. As stomach medicine is being advertised, it is understandable that a belly is shown. The question is, why a woman, naked not only around the waist, but to the bust? This ad should be reasonably criticized for using a naked woman merely as an eye-catcher.

When this ad was published in an almost identical version in 1995, the HRCC sent a letter to Morishita Jintan. When the ad was published again in 1996, we sent a letter again and made clear our opinion, asking the firm for its point of view. But to our regret and disappointment, the firm made no reply in either case, and continues to publish the same ad. We would like to ask Morishita Jintan to be more sincere in the way it handles human rights issues, especially discrimination against women.