Goal #5 : Gender Equality

Introduction and UNESCO:

The purpose of this e-portfolio is to reflect upon my IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications) Project on UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) 17 Sustainable Developmental Goals and how this whole process addresses some common issues faced globally, which UNESCO claimed to eliminate by the year 2030. There are many countries across the globe facing challenges such as gender equality issues, plastic pollution, poverty, animal cruelty, lack of primary education, lack of healthcare system, etc. but no one comes forward to resolve such issues. Despite all the hardships, UNESCO initiated to approach these global issues, take meaningful actions, and make this world a better place for all of us to live. My project focused on UNESCO’s ‘Gender Equality’ goal, especially in Tanzania and how this project is aimed at a campaign and marketing strategies to attain gender equality goal in that particular country.

Selecting a Goal:

Selecting a goal out of UNESCO’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals was the hardest part of this project because several goals caught my attention and were interesting for me to work on. Out of those 17 goals, I was eager to work on education, life below water, healthcare, and gender equality goal. Majority of these goals were interrelated to one another, for example, if an individual is provided with good healthcare facilities, then he/she will be healthy enough to fulfill their educational goals in life and get a respectable job in the market which will indirectly resolve issues of poverty in the community.

On the other hand, life below the water was another fascinating topic I wanted to work on this project because previously in my MRKT 4331 course I was developing an ideology for selling reusable straws in the consumer market to resolve the plastic pollution issue and save lives below the water. I did very thorough research and analysis on this theme, but since the Federal Government was already taking actions in banning plastic straws, it becomes less challenging and exploring for me to pursue the same notion for this project.

Therefore, I decided to explore UNESCO’s gender equality goal because somehow, this goal plays a significant role in my life since I have witnessed numerous girls and women being outcasted in a culture of the male-dominated society.

In many parts of the world, especially Tanzania, it has been observed that young girls are deprived of higher education because the moment they complete their high school they are married to a man and are being told that their only job is to look after their husband and the house for the rest of their lives. The old cultures and traditions of many families have created this hypothesis that woman are only good at cooking and running a family at home. However, this is not true because in today’s society women deserves to have an equal opportunity to that of the boys and men in Tanzania and have all the freedom to make their own choices in life. Even the Tanzanian country believes in the perspective of having gender equality and corporation as displayed in the coat of arms.

In my situation, my mother has always been my biggest inspiration and the reason why I decided to showcase my project on this particular goal about gender equality. She is the women who stood up for herself, despite all the hardship she faced with raising and educating three children. For me, my mother is my role model because she took responsibility of the house, her children and also worked at the same time to fulfill the necessities of our lives, give us a good education and make us successful and good human beings in the future.

PHASE ONE:

Research and Data Collection:

After selecting the ‘Gender Equality’ goal in Tanzania, my next aim was to do some primary and secondary research and development, collect all the significant data and statistics which were not only valuable for this project but were also most recent and up to date. Gathering information was a bit challenging part of the project, especially about Tanzania because very limited data was available on the internet about Tanzanian gender equality issues. Moreover, the cultural and the political perspectives of the Tanzanian community in the past few years have been very different and unfavorable for the broadcasting channels and news editors to publish it online, especially if it is showcasing the negative impression of the country.

On the other hand, Tanzania is portrayed more as the tourism industry and is well known for its national parks, reserves, and Africa’s highest mountain ‘Kilimanjaro.’ After intense research and filtering of some of the websites, I found some meaningful studies which helped me in processing the project towards the next stage. Figure 1.1 below highlights some of the key issues regarding gender inequalities that are being faced in Tanzania. .

Figure 1.1: Common Issues of Gender Equality in Tanzania:

Target Market and Allies:

The report generated from the research and collection process helped underline the target market for the campaign that who were the active allies, who were the passive allies and who were the neutrals in the market segmentation. ‘Caring Charles’ was the persona that I developed, and it was divided into three allies.

‘Active Allies’ being the first category, are the individuals or organizations that are aware of the issues of gender equality and are part of such non-profit organizations who are also working on such projects to battle against such discriminations although they are unable to overcome these issues due to lack of enough resources and materials. Individuals such as volunteers, donors, financial aid providers, etc. are all considered as active allies. The second category individuals are called as ‘Passive Allies’ who have some knowledge of what gender equality means but are unaware of what kind of inequalities are happening against women. ‘Neutrals’ comes under the third category of Caring Charles; these are the individuals who do not know what gender equality means, nor they are aware of various kinds of inequalities going on against women.

My aim for this campaign would be to use hooks as shown in the diagram below (Figure 1.2) to convert the ‘Neutrals’ into ‘Passive Allies’ and the ‘Passive Allies’ into the ‘Active Allies.’ This goal will be achievable through the male allyship approach in this campaign where men can realize and understand that the norms they are following for a past couple of decades are false and that they should be open-minded about a woman having equal rights as men. Moreover, it will be the campaign through which one man can educate and pass on their knowledge to another man and change their perspectives regarding gender equality in a more positive way.

Figure 1.2: Spectrum of allies. Art by Joshua Kahn Russell.

Contributed by Joshua Kahn Russell

In terms of discovery and direction, I wanted to create a visual presentation of statistics and facts gathered regarding gender equality issues in Tanzania. The reason why I selected Tanzania is that I have lived 22 years of my life there, and I have seen and observed how the gender gap has been in place for a very long time. Although the gap has been reduced to some extent, there is still a window of opportunity to resolve the gender equality issue at a larger scale. However, the challenge faced in the Tanzanian community is that majority of the people living in the country are cultural and traditional-minded people who believe in passing on their old values and beliefs from one generation to another through word of mouth. This makes it harder for some women to break their old norms and breath into the new reforms and traditions.

My goal with this project would be to break the barrier/ wall of a generation going on through word of mouth by educating the men and the families with the importance and reasons of ending the inequalities on women. The image below was the initial draft designed of the infographics for the first part of the campaign.

Improvements and feedback from Phase 1:

After submitting the infographic and the persona, the feedback received was very helpful and educational. The feedback received might seem small from one’s perspective but can be a big issue from others standpoint. There were few things which required changes for the Infographics and the Persona document that would bring my project with a clear thesis and a better prospect. With special thanks to some of my colleagues –in class and my professor for the feedback, I was able to identify the flaws in the infographics and persona document, which are highlighted as follow:

Figure 1.3: First draft for Phase 1

Firstly, the color of the women and men in the infographics were initially (pink for women and blue for men) as it appears by default on any design application or page. While working on the infographic, I was being recommended by one of my peers that since this is a gender equality project, it would make sense to showcase both the genders in the same color as shown below in (Figure 1.4).

Secondly, few other things required changes from the first draft such as the omission of the Tanzanian map which was initially there to define the content, but since it was making the infographics too crowded it was better to exclude it from the design.

Moreover, some of the key facts and statistics required highlighting and making them bold so that they are more visible to the audience. The images used in the first draft of the infographics were not copyrighted, but after the suggestion and feedback provided by my professor, I replaced the images with creative commons images through resources such as Unsplash, Pixabay, Flickr, etc. One of our guest speaker, Mr. Rajiv Jhangiani also spoke to us on how to identify copyrights and what resources can we use for our project so that we don’t have to face copyright problems. He explained to us the different options of creative commons licenses available and the significance behind that.

Lastly, after receiving some feedback, I also specified my goal and the thesis statement illustrating the direction my project was heading into for example, what kind of actions are expected from the different stakeholders rather than just mentioning that the objective of this campaign is to educate and create awareness among men.

Final version of Infographics for Phase 1 (Post-correction version)

Thesis:

With all the research analysis conducted on the topic of Gender Equality in Tanzania and deeply understanding its context, the thesis statement narrates that despite having lack of resources and information, there is an opportunity for some Non-Profit Organizations in Tanzania to raise this issue and resolve it. Even it was evident through the statistical data of Tanzania that there are improvements in the number of women receiving a proper education. Moreover, the rates of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) victims have also dropped down in Tanzania, and some women are also holding Ministerial positions in the government. This demonstrates that as part of UNESCO’s 17 sustainable development goals, gender equality is being a major concern for urban as well as the rural countries in many parts of the world, including Tanzania.

Figure 1.5: First draft of Persona page for phase 1:

After the submission of the first draft of the persona and audience section, the feedback generated by the professor was very valuable and informative to give a better understanding to the stakeholders about the project. One of the suggestion narrated that the persona should be breakdown into sub-categories so that it becomes easier to identify the active allies, the passive allies, and the neutrals.

Another feedback was provided regarding the stakeholders. It was significant to know which stakeholder would be interested in implementing the campaign that is made for them to amplify their efforts. The persona should also identify the stakeholders and why are they the perfect match for the campaign. What tools and channels would the campaign use to communicate with the stakeholders and what are their attitudes, interests, and opinions.

By doing this thorough research, it was also easy to determine what social media the stakeholders use, (which were mainly Facebook and Instagram.) The research further facilitated with profiling a persona and help in understanding the demographics and psychographic of who are the stakeholders. See Figure 1.5 above for the draft and Figure 1.6 for the final version with the changes made.

Figure 1.6: Final version of the persona page for Phase 1:

Phase 2 - Designing the landing page:

With designing aspect, I wanted to design a page that would be very similar to most non-profit and NGO pages with call to actions such as subscribe, donate, and volunteer. The only difference with my landing page would be having different sections for all stakeholder. The landing page will also be available in two languages, which are Swahili and English as those are the languages spoken in Tanzania. One feedback provided by my Instructor was to avoid calling out on NGO’s and non-profit organizations, as it makes sense that anyone would be able to consume the information on the website and not necessarily be NGO's or non-profit organization.

Figure 2.1: Division of content

In this section, the content was divided into two parts. The support us (formerly known as NGO’s and the Non-Profit Organizations) on the left side will be for those people who are looking for support or who can support us.

While on the right side, we have a Volunteer’s page, which is for the passive allies who have a very limited to no knowledge regarding gender equality and inequalities women are facing within the country.

Both sections will also include content that will be suitable for the audience and which they can view, download, and re-use the content for their campaigns and other projects as it is licensed under creative commons.

The name, the big idea, and logo:

Initially, the name of the website was ‘Frontierless for women,’ which meant “no boundaries for women” and that men had to go beyond their extent to accept their responsibility for the inequalities. The objective of the name was also to create a Male allyship which would help them in educating themselves and others to become better allies and support gender equality. However, after receiving feedback from my professor, I had to switch the name because it was bringing a conflict towards the Canadian context and the word “Frontierless” was having a different connotation of conquering. So, after heading back to the drawing board, I came up with another name for the website, that is ‘Usawa for Us,’ meaning “Equality for Us” which makes a statement that even for men as allies we want equality for Tanzania.

Similarly, the logo and the big idea also had to be re-visited. The logo had an Infinity sign which was later had a mirrored double so that it states that men have to go above and beyond infinity to become better allies and to become responsible for their actions towards the inequalities that women face. The logo after the feedback only has a minor change of the name being removed (See Figure 2.2).

On the other hand, the big idea has also been changed as initially the campaign was supposed to a male-allyship and women to women empowerment due to the statistics showing that even women believe that their job is to only stay at home and care for the family. So, I thought it would be a good idea for successful women to inspire those women to become an independent, successful, and equal contributor to society with the “my life my right” campaign. However, that might be perceived as women not playing their part so just sticking with the aim of male allyship is the purpose of the campaign and removing the “my life my right” campaign which was changed from whatever it takes from Phase 1 of this project.

Figure 2.3: Logo design and evolution:

Some other feedback I received on the landing page was that keeping the donation button would create a concern with the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) considering ‘Usawa for Us’ is not a registered charity. Secondly, the campaign behind FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and the content posted on the blog was not considered appropriate within the website as moves away from the direction of male allyship and addressed a separate issue. Thirdly, some corrections were made on terminology such as the word ‘privilege’ was replaced for the word ‘right’ otherwise the term equality would be interpreted as privileged in spite of equality being a right.

Last of all, the landing page had a lot of things happening at the same time and had too many colors, images, and content. Before the feedback was provided, (Figure 2.4) reflects how the landing page looked like. But after adjusting to only four colors, i.e., blue, white, grey, and black and removing some of the excessive pages and information, the research and data become much more visible, and the landing page looks much better and elegant.

Figure 2.4: Landing Page prior feedback.

After addressing all the issue and feedback, the webpage had a simple and more attractive feel (See figure 2.5). Website URL before feedback: https://imagic88.wixsite.com/frontierless4women

Figure 2.5: Landing page after Feedback

After feedback website URL: https://imagic88.wixsite.com/usawaforus

For the tone and language, I initially thought it should be based on the website, but after the feedback from the professor, I realized it was all about the brand. Thus, the tone and language of my brand are about being professional, simple, and straightforward.

Moreover, using the language that is very modern and talks about relevancy as gender equality is a straightforward subject. With the aid of visuals, this project also aims at building curiosity where men are being questioned about what can they do to become better allies for gender equality? These are all the important factors because they are an effective and diplomatic approach to communicate with the stakeholders and make them identify your brand because of its consistency and standard tone and language.

Later the big idea was also changed, and some corrections were made for it to fit the campaign of gender equality. Hence, the notion of ‘Actions Beyond Word’ was replaced for ‘Equal Rights, Equal All’ stating that both men and women should have equal rights and would then be considered an equal society.

PHASE 3: PLAN

Phase 3 was the most critical and most challenging part of the project. With time constraints and immense workload, I had to work on developing the content calendar simultaneously with the landing page design. It was essential to find out the campaign cost and create a budget schedule for the NGO’s and other not-for-profit organizations to know if any organization can spend on average 400,000/= Tanzanian shilling (Tshs) for a campaign or not. The purpose of this campaign was to educate men into becoming good allies at different places, time, and situations. Therefore, the budget was distributed into various sub-categories such as; workshops, walks, trips to villages, schools, and the workplaces for the equality pledges

.

The campaign was led by with few objectives and goals in mind. First of all, this campaign was built to raise money and receive enough financial aid for the success of this campaign. Secondly, the male allies were the strong pillars of this campaign. We aimed to have men from diverse cultures, race, ethnicity, and status to pledge and support the notion of gender equality for all. Lastly, as the campaign was structured more based on receiving donations, our goal was to target shorter campaigns in the beginning, and after receiving some favorable responses from the individuals, it would be ideal to launch a bigger campaign in the near future.

When we come to the discussion of the timeline, the campaign was itself designed for four months which was further sub-divided into two weeks of start-up campaign, three months of the actual campaign and the last two weeks of the closure of the campaign. The first two weeks of the campaign which would begin during the mid of August will work towards recruiting energetic volunteers and promoting the campaign with advertisements on various social media platforms as it is the fresh and the beginning of the new journey.

Once the campaign has rooted their foot on the ground, it will begin the actual three months of hard work where there will be several workshops and training conducted and professional speakers will join the campaign to guide men on how they can become powerful allies in promoting gender equality for everyone. During this time, the campaign will also be posted on social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. regarding the gender equality, videos, promotional posters, infographics, on-going work of volunteers and donors, etc.

In the last two weeks of the campaign in December, it will move towards its closure. All the hard work and efforts of the enthusiastic volunteers and donors will be appreciated at that time. Moreover, they will be rewarded with the Letter of Appreciation and the Tax-Exempt receipts for showing their dedication and motivation in making this campaign a huge success.

Campaign Timeline:

After the submission of the campaign timeline, some valuable suggestions were brought forward by my professor, which could make my campaign timeline more efficient and simple. According to her, some main factors required my attention, for example, I needed to work on my key features, the tactics of the campaigns and how to make effective use of social media platform to divert the traffic with the help of the website ‘Usawa for Us’.

As mentioned before, the sole purpose of this campaign is to reduce the gender gaps in Tanzania and with the strategy of launching male allyship campaign take pledges for equal treatments and rights for everyone in the community.

After rectifying the errors, some of the key features that the campaign would pursue includes face to face approach with the individuals regarding the gender equality concept and carrying out the surveys at the beginning of the campaign. Surveys will help us to identify our target audience, their perspective about gender equality, core values of this campaign, and to what extent is our campaign objective-oriented.

When it comes to using numerous tactics for this campaign, it means using the appropriate social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. to grab the attention of the people. Moreover, this campaign also aims at creating a new and unique trend or content on social media platforms that immediately goes viral (viral marketing strategy) with various other event promotions and marketing strategies.

In the beginning week of the campaign, the infographics and video content were established to promote (boost posts on Facebook and Instagram) for repetitive three days. This strategy will attract more people on social media, and once the hype is built up, the users will be curious to join our social media page and the website to know more about what we do and offer.

Reflections:

This project was an essential learning tool for me as I realized that studying Marketing is not just about doing research, promotion and designing for the companies, but it also requires an individual to gain the abilities to think outside the box, bringing new creativity to the table and connecting all the dots. Furthermore, I believe that some of the marketing skills I learned in my previous courses such as Marketing in a Digital World or Consumer Behaviour Concepts were meaningful in carrying out marketing research and narrowing down my target market to a specific audience with the right use of contents, images, and colors. Also, it navigated me to learn new tools and different methodologies while creating content.

Among all the accomplishments throughout my degree, I think the proudest moment for me in this course is the process where I gathered all the data, did the research, and designed my project from scratch. It was a feeling like it's your baby, and you groomed it the way you want despite the time constraints and the challenges I faced with data research. It is something which I owned completely, and I am proud of it.

After the immense hard work and efforts put throughout my educational path in marketing, I believe that my marketing goals are to work with a respectable Non-Profit Organization in the future who aim to make this world sustainable and a better place to live.

Some precious advice I would like to give to new students who are planning to take this course is; firstly, it is an amazing experience to have, and it teaches you a lot about how the marketing industry works in the practical world. Secondly, I would recommend new students to pay good attention to minor details when you are writing your content because one statement in your context can mean something different in another context based on the diversity of cultures and traditions. And Lastly, I would say that challenge yourself throughout this course. Of course, there will be many barriers and obstacles during this journey, but if you treat your project like it's your baby, you will see the glory and the victory will be yours.

Challenges:

o Finding a stakeholder from Tanzania, so that the campaign would be put to good use and make a difference.

o Time constraint: probably the biggest challenge for me, considering that I missed two weeks recovering from my Inguinal hernia surgery.

o To stick with one idea, as the topic of gender equality is very broad, and to narrow it down and focus on that specific idea can be challenging.

Lessons Learned:

o Less is better, stick with an idea and elaborate it more rather than having more ideas and making it difficult to understand.

o Plan ahead, set deadlines, and get feedback from old work and always keep a copy of your previous drafts and submissions.

o Use images or content that is owned by yourself or the ones that have been licensed as creative commons by other amazing authors.

o Less is more, whether that is in a PowerPoint presentation, infographics, or even a landing page. The extra you add the more your research and data gets buried behind unnecessary information.

o Stay with a magic number and keep it as low as you can, i.e., with colors in your landing page, font colors, font types, and styles. In my case, I had four as my magic number.

o Work your logo, brand identity (language and tone) as soon as possible, which makes building a webpage and content calendar easier.

o Start looking for a stakeholder as soon as you decide your goal, know their expectations, and then deliver the campaign that they are looking for. I would recommend looking for more than one stakeholder in case one decides to back-out or is unable to commit further in the future.

References:

Niosi, A. (2019). Feedback.

Jhangiani, R. (2019). Creative commons.

Russell, J. (n.d.). Shift the spectrum of allies. [online] Beautiful Trouble. Available at: https://beautifultrouble.org/principle/shift-the-spectrum-of-allies/ [Accessed 2 Aug. 2019].

United Nations (n.d.). Goal 5: Gender Equality. [image] Available at: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/news/communications-material/ [Accessed 24 Jun. 2019].

United Nations (2019). Home. SDG Summit 2019. [online] Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgsummit [Accessed 8 May 2019].