What would the world be without women?

Kookai, a French fashion label founded in 1983 by Jean-Lou Tepper, Jacques Nataf and Philippe de Hesdin. In 2004 their Australian clothing line ran a campaign asking the question “What would the world be without women?” In one particular advertisement we see a average man dressed in women’s clothing and holding a baby, with the question “What would the word be without women?”
However the Australian clothing may have had the best intentions at heart to empower women and to challenge culture. This ad is asking questions about the role of women and the role of men; Are men co-dependent of women? Could the world survive without them? They may have very well done the opposite by stereotyping women even more.
By creating these advertisements it is suggesting that men are not equipped to me motherly. That without women children would grow up in a different world. This might be so, however it is defining women by their role of motherhood. This causes the way that women look at this advertisement to change, it turns the question to ‘How would children survive without their mothers?’ This is stereotyping that a women’s most important role is to make sure how the next generation grows up.
This is not the only image that the Kookai campaign used. They also ran advertisements where average men are wearing more revealing clothing, however they are no longer holding the baby in their arms. With this advertisement Kookai is defining women by their looks by suggesting that the most important thing that women contribute to the world is sexiness and that the world would miss looking at women before they would miss anything else about them if the world had no more women.
Although Kookai had their best intensions at heart to empower women and show that women play just as an important role as men, they stereotypically defined women in their two most common roles in the media; motherhood and being ‘sexy’. These types of advertisements contribute to culturally biased views on women and reinforce the stereotypes of women.