Raven News

An exhibition celebrating 100 years of women’s suffrage was launched in Fitzrovia’s Noho Studios on Wednesday.

Organised by marketing company Kantar, the exhibition ‘What Women Want?’ is designed to show the changing representation of women in advertising over the last century, highlighting the need to make women feel proud of their natural beauty.

Kristy Cooke, Head of Digital Content at Kantar, said: “There is a huge opportunity for brands if they can connect better with female audiences and help build women’s self-esteem.”

Cooke, who works with organisations to help develop advertisements and make their marketing more impactful, added: “A lot of ads developed quite early (in the last century) did really empower women at the time.”

The exhibition space, which attracted a small crowd on its first day, is filled with adverts dated as far back as 1910.

In 1918, the Representation of the People Act gave some women the right to vote for the first time in the UK. From this point, the depiction of women in advertising began to change rapidly.

A World War Two ad shows two women in military uniform with the message: “Every woman not doing vital work is needed now.” Another famous wartime ad from 1943 shows a woman holding up her arm with her sleeve rolled up, under the caption: “We Can Do It!”

The exhibition also features more contemporary adverts, reflecting the changing landscape of female representation in the media.

A Sport England campaign shows a woman wearing her headscarf while boxing, captioned: “A kick right in the stereotype.” An advert for River Island, produced earlier this year, shows a model wearing clothes that are “100% Gender Free”.

Alex Barker, 34, who attended the exhibition opening, said: “It’s quite impressive that in a hundred years so much change has happened. It’s good to see that each year there are improvements and progress”.

Barker, who works for a chocolate company, came to the exhibition to get advertising inspiration for his own products.

In one corner of the gallery, there is a large photograph of a make-up free, grinning woman, as part of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign. This focus on natural beauty is central to the message of ‘What Women Want?’: adverts that empower women, rather than the typical commercialisation of the female body that so many brands use.

“I think if [a woman] doesn’t see herself reflected in the world around her, this can damage her self-esteem,” Cooke said. “That’s what we found out with our research.”

She highlighted the message of the exhibition: brands building their audiences, but without excluding people at the same time.

‘What Women Want?’ runs at Noho Studios from the 21st to 29th November 2018.