Fast Cars, Equal Pay: Audi Drives Controversy on Gender Parity Ad

taketheleadwomen.com - The hotly contested Audi television commercial premiering at The Super Bowl features a father mulling over how to tell his young daughter the financial facts of life. He asks if she knows that “despite her education, her drive, her skills, her intelligence, she will automatically be valued less than any man she ever meets?”

He then decides, “Or maybe I’ll be able to tell her something different,” and they head over to an Audi to drive off into the sunset of gender parity.

The spot is the work of Aoife McArdle, a female director, another anomaly in the advertising world, where fewer than 10 percent of the top commercial directors are female.

“The commercial closes with father and daughter embracing after the race and walking up to their shiny Audi S5 Sportback, because after all, it’s a car commercial. That doesn’t make the message about equality and progress any less moving and important, though. Additionally, Audi said it has pledged to ‘support ongoing commitment to women’s pay equality in the workplace and to foster a work environment that drives equality for all employees,’ according to a press release,” writes Tony Mervick in Thrillist.