WINNERS 2021

Background Ukraine’s score of gender equality in Political Empowerment is worse than in 90% of European countries. During the country’s 30 years of independence only 9% of members of Parliament were women. Research shows that the metaphorical glass ceiling is not the only problem. Every Ukrainian woman, thinking of a political career, knows that she has to face archaic stereotypes, violence, verbal and psychological abuse, humiliation, discrimination and devaluations of her opinion by male colleagues. It all stops women from going into politics. Although 65% of Ukrainians want to see more female politicians, they fail to see or understand the problem. In the heat of the 2020 local elections race we made the problem impossible to ignore. Creative idea/Strategy To start a long-overdue conversation about gender inequality in politics we divided the entrance to the building of the Parliament (the symbol of Ukrainian politics) in two: for men and for women. While men’s path to politics remained uninterrupted, the symbolic path for women went through a whole labyrinth of barriers and living stereotypes – the Gender Labyrinth. Installed in the middle of lockdown and during a parliamentary session, the Gender Labyrinth took members of parliament by surprise. It made the invisible stereotypes and obsolete barriers visible. It made the harshness of women’s path to politics hard to ignore by politicians, influencers and the media. Execution The campaign launched with an offline event for politicians and media. The Gender Labyrinth consisted of 6 rooms, each dedicated to an obstacle or a stereotype such as: “Woman’s main calling is to take care of the house and raise children”, “Politics is a men’s business” or “Women are a weaker sex”. 80 sq m of symbolic art-objects, glass ceiling, real-life threatening quotes, AR illustrations by famous Ukrainian artists – all that created an experience that let every men politician finally feel what it is like to be harassed, discriminated and suppressed. For those, who didn’t make it to the Labyrinth, 3D tour on a campaign website allowed to dive into the experience no matter the time or the place. Men politicians started making statements about gender equality in the media. Women politicians shared their personal stories about the ‘Labyrinths’ they went through in real lives. And Ukrainians showed their support. Results In the middle of the elections race, in a time when commercial breaks were littered with political ads, despite all the lockdown event limitations, Gender Labyrinth attracted +130 media and was covered in prime time of 5 main news channels. +9,8 mln voters were reached with 0 media budget. By the end of the campaign +18,7 mln voters (more than 60% of all Ukrainian voters) got our message through paid digital promotion. The campaign received +$150,000 in earned media. But most importantly it was the first time in the history of independent Ukraine that the number of women elected to city councils have increased by 70%. The conversation, started by the Labyrinth, led to the creation of the first bill that defines "sexism" in Ukrainian legislation. To mark this moment in history we destroyed the Labyrinth, as a reminder that stereotypes can and must be broken.