WHILE it may sound like a made-up, random word—“Femvertising” actually holds a lot of meaning and significance behind it. It is a term that was coined by SheKnows Media and it is basically an essential part of an advertising strategy that is used by businesses to promote goods and services using pro-women messages. It claims to empower women and girls by encouraging gender equality while disregarding traditional stereotypes of women.

While women empowerment is nothing new, it has gained quite the popularity in recent years, especially on the scenes of social media. Femvertising is no stranger to certain businesses as the sales of their products rely on this strategy. Femvertising to some may be the idea of “selling empowerment” to women and girls, through capitalism. Some brands may be genuine in their claims to empower while selling their goods but others might want to hijack a meaningful movement just to gain coins.

Giant corporations might want to use femvertising as a means to appeal to their women and girls who are consumers of their products. They may want to use women’s empowerment to gain more access to these women’s pockets. To them, they’d say it’s a win-win. They uplift and empower us while we purchase or help their products to sell in return. It’s social “empowerment” through business in a sense. In a world where social media and networking have such a great influence over perspective and direction—one can only be left to wonder what can happen if femvertising is used in the right aspects and avenues of women’s empowerment.

Imagine if the intentions behind the campaigns and movements were focused less on money and more on empowerment. Imagine if these multimillion-dollar corporations go a step forward to actively help women in need by offering support and help when needed. The problem doesn’t lie with femvertising itself or the idea of it—it is the fact that so many businesses often wrongly execute their ideas of it. Women have been fighting to be understood and valued for a very long time. It is a shame that now an idea of what they deserve is bottled up into a supplement, or is the face of a sanitary product line and sold to us because it’s what we “deserve”.

The world of business advertising has objectified women, their bodies, their rights, and their livelihood to sell products to their main consumer group — men. Nowadays, those very insecurities and devaluations of our rights are being addressed through the very sector that made us feel insecure and devalued in the first place. I wonder what would happen if women’s empowerment didn’t garner the support and attention it now has. Would businesses still use femvertising as a lead strategy in marketing? One can only wonder.