Wanted: More difficult women
Opinion
An industry debate which punishes women for calling out the damage toxic media narratives do to women and girls leaves us all falling short, writes Nicola Kemp.
Who gets to be difficult?
If we want to build an industry where women can reach their full potential, this is the question we’re collectively sidestepping.
While we celebrate men sharing a definitive point of view, the omnipresent eggshells women face every day increasingly feel like shards of glass.
The 101-page civil lawsuit filed by a 20-year-old Cornell undergraduate who was assaulted for hours by seven men from Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house is the latest chapter of the story of violence against women.
The shock of recent weeks only grew as it became clear that several of the men involved were ‘afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays.’ The abuse the young woman faced was broadcast without fear or feeling on a group WhatsApp chat.
The lawyer for the woman shared that she is ‘under siege’ from online sleuths looking to name her. It’s harder to blame a woman when you cannot publicly identify her. Women have shared their own message of solidarity by posting videos of themselves with the message: ‘I am Jane Doe’. Often shared with their own experiences of sexual assault.
So often these experiences remain unsaid, reflecting the weight of the judgement reflex women face.
According to research from TimeTo, 34% of female respondents have been sexually harassed while working in the advertising and marketing industry. Of these, 83% did not officially report their experiences.
The stakes have never been higher, and the pressure to stay silent remains. If you are a woman in the media industry with the audacity to speak your mind and highlight this toxic rise of misogyny, then you are that most unemployable of things: a difficult woman.
A culture of silence
The truth is you can’t wax lyrical about media and advertising’s role in culture if you cannot recognise the fundamental truth that it is disproportionately women and girls who pay the price for the toxic underbelly of that culture.
You may have rolled your eyes at the backlash to betting brand Novig’s latest campaign. In fact, if you’ve directed any criticism at Sydney Sweeney, the actress starring in the ad, rather than the brand itself, you may not even have registered the brand behind it. Women are always at the centre of blame.
Indeed, you may not have flinched at the deluge of LinkedIn posts dedicated to discussing everything apart from the real-world cost of such heavy-handed objectification.
The advertising campaigns that reduce women’s bodies to objects and teach young girls to shrink their ambitions are little more than talking points for men seeking to grow their visibility, rather than their understanding. It’s 2026, but in some circles it’s considered sanctimonious to give a shit.
Yet as entrepreneur Jingjin Liu wrote so powerfully: “When a girl learns that her body is a product before she learns it is her power. We have not just sold an ad; we have sold her a smaller future.”
The relentless rise of the reply guy
It is not just young girls who are being sold this smaller future. In a wider media ecosystem where women are held to completely different standards, we must recognise that the industry’s structures and social norms continue to hold women back.
Here is just a sprinkle of behaviour from women that has been described to me as ‘difficult’.
A media sales director who declined to go on an overnight trip with a client who had made sexually explicit comments. A female entrepreneur charging her market rate to speak at an event. A founder sharing her point of view accompanied by a picture of herself on LinkedIn. A female director volunteering to support a not-for-profit board. A female CEO suggesting a junior sales executive might actually need to sell some inventory.
Difficult is what we collectively choose to call women when they choose not to be convenient. As an industry, we continue to allow men to grow their profiles on their sharp edges while constantly tone policing women for stepping outside of constantly changing invisible lines.
We romanticise difficult men. While ignoring the fundamental truth that the women who had to work with them and absorb their mistakes wiped out their own ambitions in the process.
A man’s difficultness can be cultivated into a brand. Yet a woman using her platform to highlight the need to protect women’s safety is all too easily shamed into silence. Even when that silence costs other women’s safety.
Even in the age of #womensupportingwomen, the support all too quickly runs out just as a woman has something important to say.
When telling the truth makes you difficult, we have never needed more difficult women.
No one should have to experience sexual harassment. If you think you have experienced or witnessed sexual harassment, contact NABS on 0800 707 6607 between 9 am and 5.30 pm or email [email protected].
Nicola Kemp has spent over two decades writing about diversity, equality and inclusion in media. She is now editorial director at Creativebrief and writes for The Media Leader each month.