The Women and Whisky: Female Representation in Social Media Marketing report has been conducted by OurWhisky, a platform championing diversity and equal representation in the whisky industry.
The report highlighted a disparity between the number of women and men being represented in social media marketing, with the number of Instagram posts featuring men outnumbering women by 228% on 150 of the biggest and most influential brand accounts.
Becky Paskin, co-founder of OurWhisky, says: “Many brands will no doubt be marking International Women’s Day by highlighting some of the incredible women in our industry.
“Celebrating female achievements is a wonderful thing, but to really honour these women and make whisky truly inclusive, we’re asking brands to consider how their year-round marketing is representative of today’s drinkers.”
The study found women account for just 36% of people represented in 2020, although it showed that overall female representation has seen a small increase of 4.7% since 2016.
Paskin added: “In the last five years we’ve seen a welcome rise of female representation in whisky marketing, however this study demonstrates we’re still far away from achieving gender equality.
“Whisky brands have the power to normalise the fact women make and drink whisky by what they choose to show in their advertising and marketing.
“They don’t need to feminise their brands, but by simply being more inclusive they can change the narrative and appeal to a wider demographic of potential customers, which has obvious business benefits as well.”
