On December 3, an online training session titled “Advertising Without Stereotypes: Learning a Conscious Approach” was held via the Zoom platform. The event was organized by the Industrial Gender Advertising Committee with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Ukraine.
Students engaged in discussions on the importance of combating and countering gender-discriminatory advertising through the lenses of research, analytical thinking, artificial intelligence, and neuromarketing.
During the training, participants learned to identify sexism in advertising and received insights into the activities of Ukraine’s state regulatory body in this field – the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection (SSUFSCP). They were also introduced to practical aspects of adhering to the Ukrainian Law “On Advertising.”
An intriguing topic, “Sexism in Advertising: What’s AI Got to Do With It?”, was explored. Participants examined key sources of gender discrimination in digital advertising, such as data imbalances, flaws in trained models, overly narrow ad targeting, and the lack of proper feedback mechanisms to correct identified biases. The discussion also covered technical, ethical, and legislative methods to prevent sexism in advertising: from tools provided by major digital advertising players for dataset verification and automated content analysis for sexism, to proper prompt engineering with explicit attention to gender balance; from the Framework Convention on AI and Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law to Ukraine’s developed Recommendations on Responsible AI Use in Advertising and Marketing Communications.
“In summary, technology, as always, is just a tool that can be incredibly effective in combating sexism, but only under one crucial condition: thoughtful human oversight and accountability,” said trainer Olena Andriienko.
The trainers was Iryna Lylyk, President of the Ukrainian Marketing Association; Olena Buchynska, Head of the Kyiv Regional Office of the Industrial Gender Advertising Committee; Valentyna Senchuk, Head of the Advertising Sector of the SSUFSCP in Ivano-Frankivsk region; Tetiana Borysova, Doctor of Economics, Professor, and Head of the Marketing Department at West Ukrainian National University; and Olena Andriienko, Deputy Legal Director at Publicis Groupe Ukraine, member of the Supervisory Board of the All-Ukrainian Advertising Coalition, and member of the Expert Advisory Committee on AI Development in Ukraine under the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
The event was organized in response to numerous requests from educational institutions and brought together over 260 students from 22 institutions across various regions of Ukraine.
