A series of ads by UN Women, revealed in late October, used the Google Autocomplete feature to uncover widespread negative attitudes toward women. Global Voices followed reactions to the UN Women campaign and conducted its own experiment in different languages. The results of searches conducted both within the UN Women campaign and Global Voices revealed popular attitudes not only about women’s social and professional roles, but also about their sexuality, appearance and relationships with men.
The creators of the UN Women ads used search phrases like “women cannot”, “women shouldn’t”, “women should” and “women need to” completed by genuine Google search terms to highlight overwhelmingly negative stereotypes, sexist and highly discriminatory views held about women by society globally. The ads quickly went viral and sparked a heated discussion online. Last week, creators have announced that they are planning to expand the campaign in response to the mass online reaction.
The auto-complete function for searches, according to Google, predicts users’ queries based on the search activity of all users of the web as well as the content of indexed pages. The predictions may also be influenced by past searches of the particular user if they are signed into their Google account.
Global Voices asked its contributors from around the world to carry out Google searches using the same or similar phrases as those used in the UN Women campaign, in their own languages. The searches done between October 19 and October 25, 2013, revealed attitudes about the roles women are expected to take in society, often demonstrating the same global prejudices, but sometimes showing contradictions in different countries. Below are searches in 12 languages from different countries and continents:
Spanish
Chile
Women should not…
Women should not preach
Women should not work
Women should not talk in the congregation
Women should not drive
Peru
Women cannot…
Women cannot preach
Women cannot be pastors
Women cannot donate blood
Women cannot live without man
Puerto Rico
Women should…
Women should be submissive
Women should use the veil
Women should preach
Women should work
French
France
Women should…
women should stay at home
women should work
should women preach
women should wear skirts
women should be submissive
women should know
women should vote
women should stay at home
should women work
women should do the cooking
Women don’t know…
women don't know how to drive
women don't know what they want
women don't know how to be in love
women don't know how to read cards
Arabic
Egypt (similar results in Jordan)
Woman cannot…
Woman cannot live without marriage
Woman cannot live without a man
Woman cannot keep a secret
Woman cannot interpret man's silence
Chinese
Women cannot…
Women cannot be too smart
Women can't drive
Women cannot give birth
10 topics women cannot discuss with their husbands
Romanian
women should not…
women should be loved not understood
women should not be understood
women should not wear pants
what women should not do in bed
Italian
Italy
Women should…
Women should stay at home
should play hard to get
should stay in the kitchen
should be subdued
Women should not…
Women should not be understood
should not work
should not be understood but loved
should not read
German
Germany
Woman should not…
Woman should not teach
My wife should not work
Woman can….
Woman cannot come
Woman cannot get pregnant
Woman cannot cook
Woman cannot get a baby
Hebrew
Women don't…
Women don't work
Women are not modest
Women don't know how to drive
Women don't want to have kids
Hungarian
A woman should be…
a woman should be a chef in the kitchen
a woman should be pretty and ruthless
Danish
Women cannot…
Women cannot drive
Women cannot control vagina
Women cannot be color blind
Women cannot barbecue
In Danish, the searches for “women cannot” and “women can” yielded the same results.
Russian
Russia
Women should not…
Women should not be believed
Women should not lift heavy things
Women should not drink
Women should not be trusted
English
The UK
Women should…
Women should be seen and not heard
Women should stay at home
Women should know their place
Not all searches carried out by members of Global Voices community turned up negative terms. Nevertheless, the results of the experiment largely confirm UN Women’s worrying conclusion that a great deal of work still remains to be done in order to advance women’s rights and empowerment around the world.
30 comments
hey i’ve edited the italian version and now some links are not working, maybe the UN women site has a problem! instead of the first link i put this: http://t.co/qgApEbaga7 for UN women south asia site. Also the picture is no available but you can re-insert usign the GV upload: http://it.globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/unwomen-hed-2013feat-400×300.jpg can you fix it? this article has a very huge impact in all the GV lingua translations! thanks! Marisa
What are the results for …
Men should…
Men should be killed
Men should not be allowed to vote
Men should not hit women
These results are also telling of a few problems.
Well Google? Can you do something?
How can Google re-educate the world??? Google is NOT making up this auto-complete; it is comprised from most common search phrases that begin with “women should”, or “women shouldn’t”.
It is NOT up to Google to change this; people’s mindset must be changed, and Google is the last entity in the world that should be involved in that. We trust Google to give us reliable access to information we’re looking for, and to help us get there. One of the ways they do is by offering auto-complete on our search phrases, making it easier to find most commonly searched things. Just because sometimes these results are socially this disastrous doesn’t mean that they should now begin censoring the functionality. Otherwise, exactly which authority should be the one to dictate what should be censored and how?