Hasta La Creative!

An art director and designer launched a site called “He Said Whaaat?” to call attention to the issue of gender discrimination in the workplace. The project also maintains dedicated Instagram and Twitter pages and makes use of the “#HeSaidWhaaat” hashtag and the website sells merchandise, with proceeds donated to organizations supporting women’s rights and career development for low-income women.

A female art director conceived of the project, which lets visitors anonymously submit personal accounts of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at work, and shared the idea with a male designer who was enthusiastic to collaborate.

“It’s so important to have men who are also feminist who advocate for women’s rights both in and out of the workplace,” the art director told AgencySpy.

She added that conceived of the project “one night after my jaw hit the ground one too many times from the things I heard men say to and about women.”

“I am speaking solely from my own personal experience right now, but from what I’ve been through and heard so many women are still afraid to come forward and tell their stories because they are afraid of being fired or hurting their careers,” she explained. “The ‘He Said Whaaat?’ website was brought to life partially on this insight. I wanted to create a website that was a collection of all the gender discrimination happening to women globally in the workplace in order to shed light on the problem.”

Although she has chosen to remain anonymous, her co-workers are aware of her involvement in the initiative and been supportive of her efforts. Going forward, “He Said Whaaat?” plans to continue growing online and on social media, as well as expanding partnerships and collaborations with other organizations in the future.

While “He Said Whaaat?” accepts submissions from all industries, she estimates around 85 percent of them come from those working in advertising. The art director behind the project thinks this speaks to the issue being especially problematic in the advertising industry.

“I definitely think this is an issue prevalent in the ad industry. Despite strides trying to be made, the ad industry still mainly remains a white men’s club,” she said. “Agencies need to focus more on diversity. The more diverse an agency is, the more diverse the range of the ideas and the better the work is that is being produced. A lot of problem stems from there not being enough women in leadership roles.”

While there has been a lot of lip service paid to gender issues via campaigns and agency initiatives tackling such issues, she believes there’s a fair amount of hypocrisy prevalent at ad agencies.

“So many agencies will roll out these big ‘sexy’ campaigns all about gender discrimination. They will plaster faces of rich white men in leadership roles along with quotes regarding the hardships women face at work and pretend that this is enough to take care of the problem,” she explained. “They will get positive PR from it, pat themselves on the shoulder and feel good about themselves. Yet none of those men in those ads truly know the hardships women face while working. It feels like so many companies are jumping on the bandwagon pretending to care about these causes yet not taking any action within the walls of their own agency.”

Instead, she said, when gender discrimination issues come up at agencies, “Usually everything gets brushed off and what they said is never addressed or acted upon. What’s worse is I’ve witnessed men engage in the conversation rather than oppose the comment.”

She added that while some agencies have implemented initiatives promising to hire more women in leadership position, “it’s always dated years from now. Why the wait? Let’s put more women in leadership now. These agencies that claim to be addressing the issues around gender discrimination are still underpaying their female employees, not giving them the same opportunities and not standing up to the problems happening on a day to day basis under their own roof. ”

In addition to hiring more women in leadership roles, one of the ways she believes the industry can improve is offering increased flexibility for working mothers.

“I strongly believe a woman should not have to pick between a family and a career. Agencies need to become more accepting with adapting flexibility in their work structure and turning their work culture in a place that doesn’t look down on women for caregiving.”

Some of He Said Whaat’s more appalling submissions are highlighted below:

Female job title: Art Director
Male job title: Creative Director
Quote/Story: “You brought me a ‘take her to dinner, romance her’ idea. I want the ‘I just wanna fuck’ idea.”

Female job title: Producer
Male job title: Creative Director
Quote/Story: Anonymous note taped to the door of the room that I used to pump breastmilk read “Human Milk Station”