UN ad campaign to highlight extent of world misogyny

[AveryJessup]

Found this link through a women's writing group that I'm part of. The UN is running an ad campaign to highlight misogyny throughout the world. It's pretty shocking!

Basically if you google 'women should / cannot / shouldn't...' etc the autocomplete results are appalling. Google suggests whatever the most popular searches are to match the terms you type in and for phrases like 'women should' it has 'women should shut up' 'women should stay at home' and so on. This shows that these phrases are popular search terms.

I was skeptical at first but I've checked myself for 'men should' and 'men cannot' and the results are much more innocuous, things like 'men should always pray' or ironically 'men cannot be feminists'. Pretty awful to see such a dire contrast between what people search for related to men and what they search for related to women.

wow.

I get women should :
stay at home
be seen and not heard
know their place
not preach
be in the kitchen

women cant :
driver
read maps
park
have it all

men should:
weep (its the name of a play, think that's why it appears)
talk
serve women
not wear shorts

men cant
fly
cook
multitask
love

you need a space after the 'should' to eliminate the 'shoulder' ones!

Girls should:

know about guys

not be educated

be treated like princesses
be more disruptive
know this
stick together

The 'not be educated' is particularly depressing - I'd actually anticipated that because of Malala 'be educated' would show up.

Girls should also not play football, go to college or chase boys, play video games or wear pants.

Boys should (oddly!)
wear skirts
wear bras
learn to cook (hooray for one sensible suggestion)
be boys

and they should not
learn to cook (oh well)
cry
play with dolls
be so modest
do housework

Women shouldn't:

work
vote
wear bras
lift weights

Women should:

stay at home
know their place
be seen and not heard
not preach

Women can't:

drive
have it all
be sexist (?)
drive in Saudi Arabia

Wow. I got 'seen and not heard', and 'stay at home' too.

Should is a biased word, though.

So I tried "women and "

I got

Women and infants
Women and children first
Women and dogs
Women and child devel

..opment.

Sigh.

This is the first time I've posted. I find it shocking that these are the most popular search terms. As the parent of a boy what would you all suggest in terms of ensuring that he is not contributing to these sexist ideals in ten years? I would be absolutely devastated if he grew up to be derogatory to women. Especially when he has a little sister.

Women shouldn't work
women shouldn't vote
women shouldn't wear bras

Women should stay at home
women should be seen and not heard

women can't drive
women can't have it all
women can't be sexist

men shouldn't hit women
men shouldn't wear white socks
men shouldn't cry

men should talk
men should weep

men can't fly
men can't be feminists
men can't be friends with women

Get much the same as everyone else.

What I don't understand is if you think eg girls should not be educated, why you would need or want to google that! Surely you just think it and that's what it is.

I have clicked it anyway to see what it brings up.

Should is a biased word, though
that's the reason for also doing parallel searches with 'men' to see if it turns up a similar negative set of results.