Olay has taken the next step in its commitment to achieving equality for women with a campaign to bring gender equity to STEM fields. The campaign #FaceTheSTEMGap debuted on Women’s Equality Day (August 26), following on the brand’s #MakeSpaceForWomen Super Bowl LIV spot that aired earlier this year.
Olay leads with science first in this campaign created by Saatchi & Saatchi. The new faces of Olay are real female STEM leaders including Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code, software engineer Erica Joy Baker, theoretical physicist Sabrina Gonzalez-Pasterski, and the youngest astronaut-in-training, Alyssa Carson.
“I grew up watching TV where Black women were depicted as doctors, lawyers, athletes, or addicts, with little in between. Rarely, if ever, did I see a Black woman technologist. Even today, images of Black women in computing are few and far between,” Baker said in a statement. “I want young Black girls to see as many faces of Black women in STEM as possible, as often as possible. Olay’s campaign will show young girls that they can not only be the change they want to see in the world but that they can be the creators of that change.”
In the Olay marketing and ads, these role models each deliver messages coded in scientific formulas or computer programming languages. Regardless of whether or not you can actually read the code, the message comes through loud and clear—women are scientists, and you can be one, too.
Olay also announced a decade-long commitment to reaching three goals by 2030: achieving gender parity in STEM education, doubling the number of women working in the industry, and boosting diversity and inclusion by tripling the number of multicultural women in STEM fields. Over the next 10 years, the Procter & Gamble-owned brand has pledged a financial commitment of $1 million to support women in the field, starting with a $520,000 donation to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF).
