Case studies on Female Empowerment Advertising from

Post-feminist Perspective

Zenan Liu1, †, Yinghou Shao2, *, †

1 Huaer Zizhu Academy, Shanghai, China
2 Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
†Those authors contributed equally.

*Email: 180203120@stu.yzu.edu.cn

Abstract. In the post feminist society, advertising has evolved into a new form,
that is, women's empowerment advertising. Women's empowerment advertise-
ments pay more attention to women's feelings, and convey women's self realiza-
tion, self acceptance and self empowerment to the society at the same time. To
a certain extent, such advertisements promote the development of feminism.
Based on the post feminist perspective, through the critical analysis of two ad-
vertising cases, this paper examines the empowerment of women reflected in
two typical advertisements. These two cases are Nike's Boundless Girls pro-
gram, and PROYA's program which proposes gender is not the borderline,
prejudice is. It concludes that women's empowerment advertisements do reflect
women's consciousness and can contribute to China's women's movement, but
they inevitably intend to sell their products. Once the simple act of purchasing
products is regarded as gaining power, the concept of women's empowerment
will be generalized, and the real needs of women will be covered up. Although
the cases discussed in this paper are still relatively limited, it will still provide
some enlightenment for the study of consumer culture from the perspective of
post feminism.

Keywords: Female empowerment, Advertisement, Post-feminist.

1 Introduction

Under the influence of post-feminism, increasingly more international corporations

are joining the wave of women's empowerment, which gave rise to women's empow-
erment advertising. Unlike the male perspective of women in the past, women's em-
powerment advertising focuses on women's own feelings. The public no longer pur-
sues perfect women, but welcomes diverse images of women. The core of this type of
advertising is not the advertisement itself, but the self-fulfilment, self-acceptance and
self-empowerment of women conveyed through the advertising.
Female empowerment, as a new advertising concept, continues to drive the femi-
nist movement by instilling a sense of femininity in advertising. The origin of post-
feminism, usually considered as a product of the second wave of the women's move-

© The Author(s) 2022

A. Holl et al. (Eds.): ICHESS 2022, ASSEHR 720, pp. 1203–1209, 2022.
https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-89-3_139
1204 Z. Liu and Y. Shao

ment, can be traced back to the 1960s. By synthesising post-feminism with the three
waves of feminism theories, Huang argued that the younger generation should not
adhere to the old feminist political claims, but should enjoy life on the basis of re-
specting differences [1]. She discussed the distinction between post-feminism and
traditional feminism from the perspective of feminism evolution, and advocated the
development of feminism pluralism to constitute the new pattern of pluralistic coex-
istence of feminism theories [1]. Due to the inherent pluralistic qualities of post-
feminism, Zeng claimed that post-feminism, as a theoretical strategy, intertwined the
contradictory theoretical systems of advancement and degradation, construction and
critique, resistance and redemption, depoliticisation and micro politicisation and pop-
ularity and scholarship in its development [2]. Cui pointed out in his article that post-
feminism was not the end of feminism, but a transformation of it, which was not as
radical as earlier feminism, but was interdisciplinary and politically moderate [3]. It
promoted women's social status by popularising female gender consciousness through
education. As a result, the status of women in advertising has changed to a certain
degree as women have become increasingly aware of their ideas. According to Wang,
women's identity had been redefined and improved under the influence of post-
feminism [4]. The original images of women in advertisements were no longer those
under men's scrutiny. Women began to go beyond their families and became active in
various fields, while males participated in the family. Changes of gender power were
added to advertisements [4]. Therefore, female empowerment advertising is a product
of the post-feminist era.
In addition, Becker-Herby argued that the advertising messages and corporate val-
ues promoted by women's empowerment advertising needed to be in line with social
values. She further suggested several characteristics of women's empowerment adver-
tising [5]. Abitbol and Sternadori examined the impact of women's empowerment
advertising from corporations with positive images on consumers' willingness to con-
sume. By interviewing three focus groups, they investigated women's and men's per-
ceptions and evaluations of the phenomenon and found that participants tended to
hold contradictory views, namely suspecting a commercial intent while supporting the
promotion of women's status [6]. The men's group thought that future research on
women's empowerment advertising should not be limited to examining women them-
selves. Among the domestic studies, Wang studied typical cases of women's empow-
erment advertising, argued that its impact was limited in countries with strong tradi-
tional attitudes and raised the question of how women could achieve self-
empowerment in the absence of consumer power [4]. Li suggested that advertising
ultimately persuaded consumers to purchase by influencing public aesthetics and that
women needed to break away from advertising culture to seek personal development
in society [7]. By researching and comparing 12 case studies of global advertising,
Dong put forward that women's empowerment advertising could not promote the
protection and empowerment of women's rights on its own [8]. Integrating the UN
Sustainable Development Goals, he called for a joint effort of all walks of life to help
realise women's rights.
Although there have been relevant theoretical studies on female empowerment ad-
vertising, it is still not in the mainstream. Nowadays, we are entering a post-feminist
 Case studies on Female Empowerment Advertising 1205

era where more studies are needed. Therefore, this paper intends to reflect on the
ambivalence and complexity of modern women's empowerment consciousness
through a critical analysis of two cases of women's empowerment advertising from a
post-feminist perspective.

2 Case descriptions of female empowerment advertising

In the post-feminist period, female empowerment advertising can be seen everywhere.

As major companies compete for the women's market every Women's Day by launch-
ing women's empowerment advertisements, the paper chooses two successful and
representative cases in recent years and analyse them.

2.1 Nike's Boundless Girls program

Nike launched the Boundless Girls program in 2019 with a promotional video to en-
courage more women to join the movement [9]. Incorporating the Women and Chil-
dren Research Centre at Peking University and Maple Data, Nike surveyed more than
2,000 girls aged 9 to 14. According to the data, more than half of the girls love PE
lessons and physical activities, but rarely exercise in their spare time. Girls are less
active in sports and are more likely to drop out of sports than boys, and there is an
established societal bias against female power. The short film asks the question from
the girls' first perspective: What kind of girl should I be? The camera then switches
between several girls, who speak rhetorically about the prejudices against them, and
then makes the point "don't let anyone tell you how to be a girl" [10], followed by
images of these girls skateboarding, playing basketball, running, dancing, etc. with
confidence. Finally, it shows that the aim of the Boundless Girls project is to design
exclusive sports lessons for girls to help them break down traditional prejudices and
enjoy the joy of sports.
In 2022, the second phase of the “Boundless Girls” project was launched with the
“Born Ready” athlete round table. Nike invited four outstanding female athletes,
namely women footballers Wang Shanshan and Wu Haiyan, who recently regained
their Asian titles, tennis star player Li Na and swimmer Liu Xiang. During the round
table event, the four outstanding female athletes talked about the importance of role
models and how it was extremely important for girls to have a role model they could
reach out to. They also shared the great changes and benefits they have had from
sports.

2.2 PROYA's "Gender is not the borderline, prejudice is" program

Unlike marketing campaigns that emphasise the power of women alone, PROYA has
balanced the issue of gender dichotomy in its imagery dedicated to eliminating gender
differences.
In 2022, PROYA continued its core insight of "Gender is not the borderline, preju-
dice is" on the 8th March last year and continued to focus on the theme of "Gender
1206 Z. Liu and Y. Shao

Equality" by releasing a short film Lion Girl. The film is voiced by a woman football
player Wang Shou and is based on the true story of the Guangzhou Lionesses. In the
short video, Wang Shuang takes on the role of a narrator, telling the story of the "li-
onesses" who overcame worldly prejudices and hard training. The Lions tumbled and
jumped in the sunrise and dusk, telling the world with their sweat and tears: "History
is not history, there is also her story. If there is no one to write it, then let us write it
ourselves. Don't let anyone stop us, including ourselves, even if it's us." In the end,
the women's lion dance team won the gold medal and was the best drumming group in
the competition, and was expected to participate in the higher level of the competition
as the representative team of Guangzhou. With their perseverance and actions, they
have made the whole community aware that strength, sweat and lions also belong to
women. In this TVC, both the narrator, Shuang Wang, and the protagonists, the "Lion
Girls Team", show their female strength in their chosen fields, and PROYA has cho-
sen to use their stories to tell all women that those seemingly insurmountable gender
prejudices are not a barrier to women, but are just paper tigers that cannot stop them
from becoming lions. On the day of the event, the topic buzzed over 120 million, and
PROYA's brand exposure and word-of-mouth grew, making it the Top 5 in the beauty
industry on T-mall, the Top 1 in Chinese beauty on T-mall, and the Top 1 in Chinese
skincare on JD [11].

3 Critical analysis on female empowerment advertising

cases

The above two advertisements are the exploration of female empowerment advertis-
ing by medium-sized corporations in the post-feminist era. The digital media era has
created favorable conditions for the dissemination of feminism, and the status of
women has been improved to a certain extent compared with the past [12]. As wom-
en's empowerment advertising continues to enter the public, women's empowerment
awareness is also increasing. However, displaying women's power through advertis-
ing is purely for profit's sake. Enterprises attach feminist labels to their products and
advocate that female consumers can acquire self-empowerment through purchase,
which tends to make female consumers have the wrong idea that female power can be
acquired through consumption [13]. In fact, the goods themselves do not shape the so-
called femininity.

3.1 Female empowerment advertising reflects female consciousness

The "Boundless Girls" short video shows how girls can be themselves regardless of
others' opinions. Social discipline is cleverly implanted from a first-person perspec-
tive. Back to the inner heart of the girls, through self-reflection and reconstruction,
they transcend social and cultural barriers, break the rules and prejudices, become
confident and brave, and reflect the strong female subject consciousness of the brand
[14]. Girls can have all kinds of images that are not defined by tradition, which coin-
cides with the reconstruction of female discourse power reflected in post-feminism.
 Case studies on Female Empowerment Advertising 1207

The voices of female athletes help girls to realise their inner potential, empower
women through sports and build and develop the future of sports for them. As the
"others" in social discourses, women can realise self-liberation only by realising the
subjectivity and transcendence of female personality [15]. The "Boundless Girls"
project gives women more rights to speak and, to some extent, influences the social
perception of women's images through advertising, thus empowering women's social
status. In the public discussion, centering on the specific gender of "men and women",
PROYA cannot be ignored when viewing the social gender concept, and goes out of
gender to return the frame of men and women to human beings, abandons the tradi-
tional concept, advocates women's desire and survival for themselves, and strengthens
the concept of female empowerment.

3.2 Women empowerment advertising is essentially "selling products"

Through advertisements, women's empowerment advertising keeps the discussion on

women's issues fermenting on social platforms, providing an open and transparent
discourse space for women and more channels for women to express their opinions
and seek equal rights.
For one thing, these advertising works echo the development of feminist move-
ment, for another, promote the further development of feminist thoughts. However,
we cannot ignore the problems in advertising production practice. While Nike and
PROYA's support of women's rights is a sign of progress, it is part of a new market-
ing strategy that still connects brands with consumers and essentially sells products
through "female empowerment". While advertising models evolve, the principle re-
mains the same: When you buy something, you are supporting and living up to a no-
ble idea. The underlying idea it is conveying is that in this age of ideas and opinions,
if you have an idea, you can live a good life. Such conceptual advertising is certainly
a more cost-effective strategy than spending a lot of money on celebrities.

3.3 Women's empowerment advertising makes "empowerment" more

generalised

Women's empowerment advertising aims to make women feel "empowered" when

buying products. As long as they pay for a product, they can be given the concept of
feminism. The slightest accusation is labeled anti-feminist and anti-social progressive.
Female empowerment has become a selling point in advertising. As a kind of female
power, female empowerment is gradually losing its power over women compared
with the past and is becoming an empty word. Feminism is diluted and exploited.
Empowerment in a broad sense makes women seem to feel empowered in everything
they do. The empowerment of women, coupled with consumerism, has made shop-
ping seems like a means for women to maintain their autonomy in a male-dominated
society. In fact, women who can afford to buy women's empowerment products do
not need to be empowered in this way. Empowerment advertising targets economical-
ly independent women in urban areas, while marginalised women who really need
empowerment are ignored. Today's society is still unequal between men and women
1208 Z. Liu and Y. Shao

and has an unequal distribution of power. Under the influence of consumerism, prod-
ucts in the guise of "female empowerment" entered the market and gained a good
reputation. However, the real needs of women have not been paid attention to, and the
status quo of women in a vulnerable position is difficult to change. Only by being
self-aware, independent of outside influences, knowing and believing in who they are
and being true to themselves can women truly be powerful and own half the sky.

4 Conclusion

This paper mainly interprets and analyzes the social significance of women's empow-
erment advertising through case studies. In recent years, as urban women's education
levels and consuming power have increased, our society is experiencing a new female
awakening, and news coverage of women has changed a lot. Under the impact of
post-feminist ideas, women play a role of embellishment and buffer in the pursuit of
personal freedom and obedience. Female empowerment advertising provides main-
stream media with an alternative cultural resource to use, a safe public dialogue space
for contemporary women to explore their own path to gentle and harmless self-
empowerment. Using the identity of a "businesswoman" as a cultural cloak, these
commercials try to persuade women to internalise the constraints society places on
them. Different levels of consumption are embedded in different levels of consump-
tion indoctrination, with most advertisements showing that only confident, financially
capable urban women are qualified to gain power from female empowerment adver-
tising products. Thus, while these groundbreaking feminist advertisements are seen as
a benchmark for the women's movement in our country, we must look at its complexi-
ty from multiple perspectives. Although we admit that post-feminism has a lot of
discussions on traditional concepts, gender discrimination and other women's issues,
it cannot be ignored that with the deepening of women's rights, social needs are re-
duced to the self-pursuit of young women, and eventually become the background of
consumer culture.

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