everywoman’s center
university of massachusetts, amherst, MA. 01003
ewc main office: (413) 545-0883 (TDD)
24-hour hotline: (413) 545-0800 or 1-888-337-0800
Working Guidelines for Challenging
Media Images of Women
We believe that corporations, publishers, producers, and advertising agencies are responsible
for producing media free of sexist or degrading images and text. In our work against violence
against women, we protest advertising, magazines, newspapers, television, film, and other forms
of media that:
use women and women’s bodies to draw attention, with no reason
for their presence and no relevance to the product;
use sexual innuendoes and make sexual promises that are
irrelevant to the product;
give distorted pictures of women’s or men’s personality traits,
skills, or abilities, or reinforce sex role stereotyping in
society;
target children using false or stereotypical impressions of what
is characteristic for women or men;
ignore or minimize news of relevance to women, or ridicule or
sensationalize women’s activities and organizations;
present irrelevant personal details in describing women, refer to
women in perjorative terms, or use sexually exclusive language;
use violence against women—images or euphemisms for harassment,
rape, bondage, maiming, torture, or murder—to sell any product;
promote false beliefs about women and violence against women, or
present women as sexual objects who experience pleasure in being
raped, injured, or coerced into sexual acts against their will;
refer explicitly or implicitly to the sexual exploitation and
abuse of girls and teenage women;
target women of color and other women experiencing multiple forms
of oppression for special objectification or brutalization.
Our guidelines are purposefully broad; we encourage you to design your own.
Some information provided by the National Swedish Board for Consumer Policies, the International Women’s Year
Commission, and Rochester Women Against Violence Against Women.