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Wunderman Thompson: Lenovo’s Equality Spell Checker
Wunderman Thompson: Lenovo’s Equality Spell Checker
Using the power of creativity to tackle gender inequality in the workplace
Despite advancements in women’s rights globally, women still face significant inequalities in the workplace and more needs to be done to improve gender diversity and inclusion in offices around the world. This is particularly true in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, which loses $575 billion a year due to social barriers for women at work.1
This is an issue Lenovo cares deeply about and so, for International Women’s Day 2020, the technology company engaged Wunderman Thompson Dubai to help raise awareness and drive further gender equality in the workplace.
Research commissioned by Wunderman Thompson uncovered the insight that some commonly used workplace words don't mean the same thing for women as they do for men. For example, while seniority for a man means authority, for 64% of women it means having their abilities questioned constantly. To highlight this problem, they targeted employees in a way that couldn’t be ignored – by hacking into the most used software programme in the world: Microsoft Word (MS Word).
The agency developed a detection plug-in for MS Word that highlighted specific words as incorrect, then revealed how they mean something different for women through impactful facts about gender inequality in the workplace. Wunderman Thompson then targeted the public with content on social media leading to the website where they could download the plug-in themselves and learn how to help tackle gender inequality in their workplace.
By using hard-hitting facts, data, and programming, Wunderman Thompson showed people how many positive workplace words have a different meaning for women than they do for men, creating a teaching tool while raising awareness.
The launch of the Equality Spell Check was a great success, with the website receiving more than one million visits in its first week and the plug-in now rolled out across other companies in the MENA region.
