In recent decades, various initiatives have been taken at international level in order to promote the dignity of women in different fields. The presentation will focuse on the protection of the dignity of women and the various normative steps taken against the stereotyping of women in the fashion field.
The United Nations has adopted the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), while similar initiatives have been launched by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Employment and Social Affairs, which has released a Community Framework Strategy on Gender Equality (2001–2005), followed by A Roadmap for equality between women and men 2006–2010, in which one of the key objectives outlined is ‘Promoting Change of Gender Roles and Stereotypes’.
The protection of dignity of women is not only at centre of various legislative initiatives, but it has also been taken into consideration by self- regulation at national and international level.
Self- regulation exists in almost all the Member States of the European Union and advertising content is regulated by independent self- regulatory organizations specifically set up for the purpose and funded by the advertising industry.
The presentation will analyse the Italian, the UK, the US and the French approaches to this problematic, pointing out the different criteria that have been developed. Some countries, like Italy, focused on the protection of dignity of female representations, while in other contexts legislatures and self- regulatory agencies have developed more stringent criteria in order to cope with problems connected with the reliability of the images shown. Some countries, for example, are pushing for the placement of a ‘warning label’ on retouched images to show that they are not real.
The presentation will finally sum up the actual discussion that emphasizes the impact that some images, especially of very thin models, may have on the public at large and especially on a very young public.