Regulation of Gender - Discriminatory Advertising in the Nordic Countries

Due to the media’s normative power to reflect daily life and to shape our understanding of gender, media plays a vital role in constructing – or deconstructing – gender equality. In modern societies, the advertising industry plays a major role in the media landscape. In the Nordic countries gender discriminatory advertising has been on the public agenda since the 1970s and 1980s, the time when gender equality legislation was adopted. However, the Nordic countries have chosen different ways of combating and regulating gender discriminatory advertising. This report presents results of a survey on how gender-discriminatory advertising is regulated in the Nordic countries. The survey was conducted as part of a project on gender equality in the media carried out during the Finnish presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2016