As part of the activities we previously mentioned, yesterday the first session of the II RAMPA Professional Meeting on the audiovisual industry was held, dedicated to Women Advertising Professionals.
Inés Segura was the first to speak after the presentations.
She called her talk “how do you do it?” as a reflection on why this question is asked exclusively to women.
She started talking about her beginnings, San Miguel, “citizens of a place called the world” was her first project as a Producer, on a personal level Inés had just become a mother and had to struggle in a way with questions that questioned her. This project won the award for best production design.
She then moved on to more recent projects:
The first, “The hidden flag”, was a women-led project and won gold at Cannes Lions. A challenging project, they travelled to Moscow and infiltrated the LGTBI flag at the World Cup using 6 activists of different nationalities who, with the shirts of their national teams, formed the rainbow when the flag was banned in Moscow.
The second one was for Turkish Airlines, on a personal level it was a project that had to be away from home for a month. This spot was 10 years after the San Miguel advert and she expressed that the difference was that on this occasion she had no regrets but on the contrary, she was proud of her work and knowing that her family was proud of her work.
Finally, she spoke about the campaign “Con mucho acento” by Cruzcampo, which has been awarded by all the advertising festivals.
This work was a great challenge, nothing more and nothing less than bringing Lola Flores back to life and they succeeded.
In this session we have collaborated with RAMPA, and in our representation was Inés Segura, executive producer of Primo, who shared the meeting with the director of photography Juana Jiménez.
When she started at Primo, there were many women but there was a big inequality between the management departments and in the more technical departments where there were only men, which is why they have included 5 female directors in the cast of the production company and more women in other departments to achieve equality within the production company.
She ended her speech with the reflection that the question “How do you do it?” will hopefully disappear slowly.
After Inés, Juana Jiménez took the floor, who spoke from her own experience and stressed that there are few female directors of photography, more and more, but it seems that it is a profession reserved for men.
When she decided to become a cinematographer, she never thought that she could not be one as a woman. As she got closer to the shoots she really saw that there were no female directors of photography and sometimes she had difficulties to be one.
At times she has felt like she has been questioned for “doing a man’s job” and this has been throughout her career, as time has gone by it seems to be changing.
Advertising has been a big booster for dop, because of how advertising itself is always in a constant search for talent, more so than in other branches of audiovisuals that women have always had a harder time getting into.
There is still a long way to go, but progress is beginning to be seen, and she also believes that this is due to the schools, where there are more and more female students.
For Juana, one of the most difficult moments was when she became a mother, she also had to put up with the question “how do you do it? She stressed that a great social change is needed, because there is a big gap between men and women on this issue.
She told us about the hard experience of having to hide her pregnancy for fear of not being called. She asked the question “How can we in the sector make motherhood more compatible with work?
We have to build a reality on this issue and encourage this change. There are many professionals who are mothers and do not want to feel judged, or displaced, or be afraid of the simple fact of being one.
Advertising also has to evolve in terms of the objectification of women’s bodies and the very stereotyped image of women in some campaigns, obviously changes can be seen, but there is still much room for improvement on some occasions.
Juana ended her reflection in this meeting by expressing that there is still a long way to go in all aspects, positions and departments, but step by step we are getting there.
Both were truly inspiring and they made a really complete meeting.
If you couldn’t see it, don’t worry because here you have the link:
https://fb.watch/bwRkWGG-Vo/
