To mark the International Women’s Day, which was celebrated on 8 March, the Brazilian advertising agency BETC São Paulo launched the “Manterruption” campaign and developed the “Woman Interrupted” app, to point out how many times a woman’s speech is unnecessarily interrupted by a man.
This expression was introduced by Times Magazine, who described the situation that took place on the stage of MTV Video Music Awards in 2009 when Kanye West grabbed Taylor Swift’s microphone and started a monologue.
The phenomenon of manterruption caught visibility, especially during the debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the race for the US presidency, when during the first debate, Trump interrupted Hillary 51 times while the former Secretary of State disturbed Trump’s speech only 17 times.
This discussion inspired the São Paulo-based agency and with the help of Brave — a company which delivers digital projects for any platform — created the app that counts how many times a woman’s speech is interrupted by a man. The mobile app uses the phone’s microphone in order to analyze everyday chats, which are not recorded or stored. Instead, the conversations will go automatically from voice to data. But to identify the men’s interruption, the app requires the user to calibrate and record the voice.
After this step, the app’s technology analyzes male and female voice frequencies, and is able to identify whether a man perturbed a female speaking; if so, the app shows a graphic with the total number of interruptions plotted.
Lucas Mattos, project coordinator at Brave Digital, describes how the app works: “When the user registers in the app, we calibrate his or her voice. Then we extract the necessary info to make verifications on the actual conversations. This is how we can identify where the person is interrupting him or herself, or if the interruption was caused by someone else.”
Woman Interrupted is free to download on Android and iOS and can be used in English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. Also, the app is accompanied by the womaninterruptedapp.com website, where users can see the campaign video, spread the word, and even look at the places where women are being interrupted.
“We believe equal voices are an important step in the battle for woman empowerment and gender equality,” is the message that goes with the project, which is a big step in establishing gender equality.
Following a similar idea for International Women’s Day, Procter & Gamble Co. launched the #WeSeeEqual campaign aiming to fight against gender discrimination.
The video made by the São Paulo-based agency, which “flies farther and farther away” and “has gender equality in its DNA,” focuses on what women feel like when interrupted by a man. The one-minute-and-twenty-second-long-video focuses on what manterrupting really is, and shows strong women like Adele, Taylor Swift, and Hillary being interrupted by rude men.
Partner, Founder, and Co-CEO of BETC São Paulo, Gal Barradas, said in a statement, “At first glance, it may seem a small problem, but reflects deeper issues of gender inequality at work and in society. The application is a way to show that, in fact, the disruption is real and alarming.” She believes that manterrupting is an action that obstructs women’s contribution in meetings and presentations by men who interfere with their speech.
Credits:
Agency: BETC São Paulo
Product: Woman Interrupted App
CCO: Erh Ray
CSO: Gal Barradas
Creative Directors: Erh Ray and Rodolfo Barreto
Head of Art: Daniel Schiavon
Creation: Rodolfo Barreto, Daniel Schiavon