The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2025
Terre des Femmes: men act out the sexism women describe in Equal Communication spots
Terre des Femmes' audio spots make sexist talk habits audible: a woman names manterruption, mansplaining or bropropriating while a man performs it.
Terre des Femmes
What it had to solve
Business communication carries hidden dominance moves: men interrupt women, explain things women already know, or take a woman's idea and present it as their own. These behaviors are rarely called out, and Terre des Femmes wanted a campaign that raised awareness and educated listeners at the same time.
How it works
Terre des Femmes' campaign addresses an overlooked problem in business communication: the behaviors men use to impose dominance over women. They have names — manterruption, mansplaining, bropropriating — men interrupting women, explaining things because they assume women don't know them, or taking women's ideas and presenting them as their own.
The creative move was to make those behaviors perceptible. In each spot a woman sets out to explain one of the phenomena while a man behaves exactly like the phenomenon she is describing, so the listener hears the problem and its label at the same moment. Hastings Audio Network produced the audio campaign.
The result is education by demonstration: rather than telling listeners that these habits exist, the spots let an audience experience how they sound and recognize them the next time they appear. The work was recognized in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- Naming and enacting the behavior in the same spot gives listeners vocabulary and recognition in one pass.
- Showing the man perform the dominance move while a woman explains it makes the power dynamic audible rather than asserted.
- Each phenomenon gets its own demonstration, so the campaign teaches three distinct behaviors instead of one vague complaint.
- The material is ordinary workplace talk, which makes the lesson immediately transferable to anyone who has sat in a meeting.
What it did
Because the man enacts the behavior as the woman names it, listeners learn a label and hear what it sounds like in one pass — awareness and education delivered together. The campaign was archived by D&AD for Terre des Femmes.
What you can take
Invisible habits are best taught by enactment: letting the audience hear the behavior while it is named gives them both the word and the ear to catch it next time.
Since then
The spots turned abstract complaints about meeting-room sexism into three named, recognizable sounds — manterruption, mansplaining, bropropriating — and gave Terre des Femmes a piece of public education that raises awareness while it entertains. The D&AD source records the concept and credits but no audience metrics, so the case rests on the device: a behavior people cannot see is taught fastest when the audience hears it happen while it is being named.
Sources
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