Why Dove and Wendy’s ‘grey’ campaigns miss the mark

The brands are back. This time they turn gray.

According to Lisa LaFlamme was ousted from her role as an anchor at CTV National News after nearly 35 years with the network, two brands in particular took the opportunity to join the growing conversation about why she was fired, including her choosing to let her hair turn gray and flagged questions from senior management about this decision and the effects it may have on women in the workplace.

A few days after LaFlamme posted a video on Twitter announcing his departure Dove Canada released their own video to the platform. In it, a young woman’s brown hair is turned “grey” using a filter, and the text displayed reads, “Grey-haired women are being pushed out of the workplace.” Dove then urged women to “go grey” by turning their profile pictures to grayscale and tweeted: “Age is beautiful. Women should be able to do it on their own terms with no consequences.

After that, Wendy’s Canada posted a photo to her social media accounts of the usual red-haired Wendy sporting a new gray. Unlike Dove who subtly hinted at her support for LaFlamme, Wendy’s cut to the chase, using her name as a hashtag with the caption, “Because a star is a star no matter what hair color they have.” (For its part, Bell Media, the parent company of CTV, said LaFlamme’s firing had nothing to do with his age, gender, or gray hair.)

These campaigns, while well-meaning, are lazy and miss the mark: Dove didn’t even feature a woman with real gray hair in its Twitter video (it showed women with gray hair on Instagram) and Wendy’s just touched up its logo. The two shared platitudes about aging and beauty. While both Dove and Wendy’s acknowledge that yes, ageism is alive and well, that’s just the tip of the gender discrimination iceberg: Women often face systemic barriers to career advancement. that go beyond hair color, issues that are compounded for racialized workers.

Glass ceilings and glass cliffs exist

Endless research shows that it is more difficult for women to climb the corporate ladder due to sexism or racism– a phenomenon called “glass ceiling”. When women are stuck in low-level jobs, gender inequalities in the workplace increase.

And when women do are given the chance to take on leadership roles, they could be placed in a “glass cliff” situation, i.e. when they are elevated to positions of power when things are already bad in a company. Once promoted to a leadership position, they are expected to turn around a bad situation, which means they have a higher risk of failure. As a researcher and professor at Utah State University Alison Cook Told Voice“When businesses are bad, really qualified white male applicants say, ‘I don’t want to get in there.’ Women and minorities may feel like this is their only chance, so they need to step up and take it.

The effects of being placed in a glass cliff situation – and falling – are long-lasting and encourage the stereotype that women, and racialized women in particular, are not well suited for leadership. If women leaders fail, they don’t have the same opportunities as men, who often benefit from ‘failure’.

Case in point: Adam Neumann, the infamous co-founder and CEO of WeWork. Neumann recently obtained about 350 million dollars funding for his new real estate start-up, Flow, valuing the company at more than $1 billion before it even launched. This money arrived despite the fact that under his leadership, WeWork imploded. When female CEOs fall, the response is very different; they don’t often get the second chance graciously given to their male counterparts. The ability to start a business is more difficult for women and minorities because they rarely receive the support they need to succeed. In 2021, women tech founders only raised 2% of venture capital in the United States, the smallest share since 2016.

We must also take into account that when women, founders or not, have children, they face additional obstacles. Studies show that mothers are perceived as less competent and engaged in their work than non-mothers and men, which may lower wages and a lower chance of promotion.

Discrimination goes beyond gray

One of the most common forms of gender discrimination is what is called “lookism», the idea that an individual can be discriminated against (or favored) based on their appearance. This manifests in various forms, including ageism, and is worse for racialized women.

Black women in particular continually face discrimination for frizzy or curly hair, gray or not. A 2020 A Michigan State University and Duke University study found that black women with natural hairstyles were perceived as less professional and competent, and were less likely to be recommended for a job interview than black women with slicked back hairstyles and white women. It’s such a problem that California has created a law which prohibits discrimination against natural hairstyles.

And for the record, Black Canadian women and girls have been victims of hair discrimination (and still are). Arisa Cox, television presenter and former host of Big Brother Canadashe says faces hair discrimination while working in the media and felt pressure to straighten her hair several times throughout her career. Where is the campaign to remedy this persistent situation?

Workplaces must do the work

Once the selfies are posted, the media coverage fades, and women continue to face discrimination in the workplace, how can organizations take the initiative to actually drive change? As part of Dove’s gray campaign, she donated $100,000 to Catalyst, a non-profit organization that supports working women. It was a seemingly positive move and one that goes beyond a moment’s social media campaign. But it’s not enough; workplaces need to turn in on themselves. Unilever, the parent company of Dove, has only three women registered in its management team of 13. Wendy’s has two wives listed on its eight-person management team.

Erica Ifill, co-founder of the Ottawa-based company Not in my colora diversity, equity and inclusion consultancy, says workplaces need to gain insight into what their teams look like and make meaningful change using a range of benchmarks outside of numerical goals to achieve a improved gender and racial equity.

Workplaces should develop strategic plans to diversify their teams by engaging in outreach efforts, creating mentorship programs for underrepresented groups, and revamping hiring processes to ensure they are really fair. For existing teams, Studies show training on bystander intervention in the workplace helps employees intervene when they see instances of bias and discrimination. “Real change takes years to happen,” says Ifill. “It has to be an ongoing process.”