A new initiative is trying to put women on the map.
Created by ad agency BBDO, the initiative “Put Her On The Map” launched last week at the 2017 MAKERS Conference. The project’s mission is to honor female role models by quite literally putting them on the map: naming more streets, landmarks and monuments after historic women.
“Women make up 50 percent of the population, but most streets, landmarks and monuments are named after men,” the initiative’s mission statement reads. “By allowing this imbalance, society makes it harder for women to find inspiration and to see their own potential in the world around them. We allow society to forget about the accomplishments of women.”
As part of the project, BBDO created a one-minute video featuring young girls attempting to think of places and things that are named after women.
In the video, the moderator asked the girls what they want to be when they grow up; and their answers are evidence of how so many landmarks are named after men, not women.
“We thought it was a story that needed to be told more broadly,” BBDO New York president Kirsten Flanik told AdWeek. “If girls can’t see it, they can’t be it.”
BBDO Worldwide’s president and CEO, Andrew Robertson, added: “When successful women are not visible in our world, there is no precedent for female potential.”
We could not agree more.