Q&A with UN Women’s Dhatri Navanayagam Stop the Robbery is a powerful campaign that raises awareness about the gender pay gap. At the same time, the website also had infographics, which had striking facts and figures about the pay gap, which members of the public could also share on social media. And if you’ve seen the video you can tell how many were not even aware of the gender pay gap, and secondly who felt that it was very unfair and wanted to take a stance on the issue. Again very much with the idea of having people share the video, engage with the video, comment on the video, and again start that conversation that needs to be had. So for us, the #StopTheRobbery campaign was really a starting point for making people aware of that gender pay gap and encouraging a dialogue on this issue. And in terms of the #StopTheRobbery video itself, we reached nearly 1.1 million unique users and received close to 540,000 views across UN Women-owned social media channels and some media outlets like Refinery29. We mentioned before that this is a topic that definitely requires education and awareness, and a lot of people may not be informed on the issue or why the gap exists. And I think that for people that may not have understood the issue, you really helped to educate in a way that wasn’t just fact based but also emotion based, which is so important. The first thing is to take part in the campaign and use your voice to raise awareness of the gender pay gap by tweeting out messages in support of income equality, and you can do that by visiting the 23percentrobbery.com website and tweeting directly from there. So you can just click and check them out and start the conversation with people that you know, because it’s super important.
Earlier this year, UN Women launched a bold social media campaign that received international attention, with millions of views and thousands of participants from around the globe.
In this episode of the Hootsuite podcast, we chat with UN Women’s Dhatri Navanayagam on the strategy behind the campaign that the world could not ignore.
In this podcast you’ll learn:
- The inspiration behind a viral campaign
- How to use compelling content to start a global conversation
- Why you should always use data to build your story
Press play to hear the show in its entirety, or if you don’t have a set of earbuds handy, read the transcription of our conversation below.
Q&A with UN Women’s Dhatri Navanayagam
Stop the Robbery is a powerful campaign that raises awareness about the gender pay gap. Can you give us an overview of this campaign?
Globally, women still make 23 percent less than men, and at the current rate it will take 70 years to close the pay gap. We really wanted to raise awareness about this issue and spark a global conversation on this topic in a way that would affect change.
To provide some background to the #StopTheRobbery campaign. This campaign was launched during the 61st Commission on the Status of Women this year on March 13th, and it was in direct support of an initiative that was launched by UN Women. The idea was to expose the pay gap in a way that the world couldn’t ignore, that being the biggest robbery in history.
We decided to stage a robbery in the center of all conversation in 2017: Twitter. We created a website called the 23percentrobbery.com from which users could tweet from and show the world what it really felt like to be robbed. So every one of those tweets generated had 23 percent of its characters blacked out, basically creating a visceral visual reminder of how the pay gap affects women every day.
Each blacked out tweet was accompanied by a message stating how UN Women had robbed this tweet of 23 percent in recognition of the 23 percent global gender pay gap.
What was your inspiration for the hashtag #StopTheRobbery? Why did you choose the word robbery?
We really wanted to elevate the conversation around equal pay by changing the vernacular around the issue. And for the world to really sit up and pay attention, we reframed the gender pay gap as the biggest robbery in history, essentially giving it an identity that the world couldn’t ignore. We wanted to make a bold statement and pull no punches in terms of highlighting the reality of the unfair income inequality that exists between men and women.
And the hashtag itself, #StopTheRobbery, is a clear call to action. And so we wanted a hashtag that was actionable and sent out a clear message that the gender pay gap must be closed.
So the idea was to use language that would make people sit up and pay attention, and provide a clear call to action on how to spread the message.
Definitely.
That strategy was super effective. Can you speak to some of your social tactics that supported this strategy? I know you’ve touched on it a little bit already.
So the three main social tactics used all spoke centrally to that 23 percent global pay gap and were aimed at bringing that to life. So number one, you had the redacted tweets, which came from the 23percentrobbery.com website, and number two was the social experiment film, and number three was the social media profile filters.
At the same time, the website also had infographics, which had striking facts and figures about the pay gap, which members of the public could also share on social media. So again the idea was very much thinking about how can people share this information and spread it to their friends, family, work colleagues, and start having a productive conversation on this.
You mention a social experiment video. Could you tell us a little bit more about what that looked like?
So this was a stunt that was filmed outside Madison Square Park here in New York, and it invited members of the public to have their shoes polished by either a male or a female shoe shiner whose wages reflected the global gender pay gap. It was one dollar for the male shoe shiner and 77 cents for the female shoe shiner.
The video highlighted the public’s reaction to the gender pay gap. And if…
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