Since the cultural watershed moment of #MeToo, the backlash against women’s voices has been intensifying.

We have seen increasing levels of physical violence against women and girls, described by Keir Starmer as a ‘national emergency’ as he launched a national strategy¹ to focus on the issue. This sits alongside an alarming growth in what has been described as “recreational misogyny”² on social media: harassment en masse designed to silence, coerce and limit women’s aspirations in public life³.

It’s not hard to see, and feel, this recreational misogyny in everyday life:

• The explosion of AI deepfake tools such as Grok and AI girlfriends as a replacement for dating real women.
• Views previously confined to misogynistic subcultures are now mainstream (see Steve Bartlett and Chris Williamson blaming “women’s socio-economic emancipation” for population decline on Diary of a CEO).
• The rise of the ‘trad wife’ influencer, rejecting the achievements made towards gender equality.
• The so-called ‘pornification’ of women’s empowerment which celebrates Only Fans as a route to wealth and entrepreneurship.
• The aestheticisation of self-care which reduces wellbeing to consumption rituals and performance.
• The medicalisation of beauty which celebrates ever more extreme efforts to meet narrow and impossible standards (see ‘morning sheds’, celebrity Ozempic, Skims’ ‘face wrap’).

All of this threatens to shrink women in public life both figuratively and quite literally.

It’s a mainstream culture that seems to have flattened down so-called women’s empowerment into individual, aesthetic, sexualised and consumption-led lifestyle choices over an emphasis or celebration of systemic and organisational progress.

It can seem like an unfathomable landscape – hard to chart and difficult to find the right points of entrance.

How should brands make sense of it all in order to successfully engage women?

We must first emphasise that social media feeds are not reliable barometers of women’s wants, needs, aspirations and desires. Alongside powerful algorithmic design, that certainly doesn’t prioritise female joy, there must also be a factoring in of ideological influence. As far right political strategist Steve Bannon said, ‘politics runs downstream of culture’ – and social media is evidently the key battleground for ideas,⁴ where seemingly anodyne social content is underpinned by political motivation.

In sharp contrast, data demonstrates the degree to which women are getting on with making choices that challenge the representations of women we are seeing and feeling in popular culture – both explicitly and implicitly.

Women are rejecting the pushback against equality by voting more progressively than their male counterparts.⁵ More young women are choosing stem (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) A-levels, traditionally dominated by boys, than ever before in the UK.⁶ More women are buying property on their own⁷, going on holiday on their own⁸ and increasingly investing in friendships and communities, rather than romantic relationships⁹.

Brands must re-dimensionalise women beyond the flattened digital, hyper sexualised identities we are presented with in mainstream culture. Rather, we see that women want and need to be engaged more effectively around solidarity, autonomy, community and the power of female friendship. The question isn’t just about what women want, it’s about how women are responding to the world they’re navigating, and research must reflect this complexity:

• Triangulate research: Social media analysis, while great for scale and speed, can be misleading. Use it alongside other research tools to build a richer, deeper and more nuanced view of women’s lives.
• Go deeper: Ethnography remains a key tool in gaining an understanding of how women feel. Use research to enable women to tell their own stories and observe how they commune with other women in private, informal spaces.
• Listen for what’s unsaid: Women are under constant pressure to perform control, empowerment and aesthetic perfection. Create a space for women to express their fears, uncertainties and exhaustion without judgement.

Rather than seeing women’s representation in popular culture as a reflection of women’s needs, explore what impact that representation is having on women and girls, then ask how your brand or organisation can more accurately represent the wider world of women’s and girls’ needs and interests today.

Addressing these questions can supersize marketing impact: effectively engaging women while simultaneously challenging the deleterious effect that current representations of women in culture are having on all of us. This should be a topline priority. 

Hanna Chalmers is founder of The Culture Studio and and Kym Loeb is an insight and strategy consultant

Reference:

[ 1 ] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vawg-strategy-to-better-protect-children-from-misogyny-and-abuse 

[ 2 ] Sophie Gilbert Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves

[ 3 ] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/06/social-media-algorithms-amplifying-misogynistic-content

[ 4 ] https://www.wired.com/story/the-most-powerful-politics-influencers-barely-post-about-politics/

[ 5 ] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2026/01/young-women-are-radicalising

[ 6 ] https://www.theiet.org/media/press-releases/press-releases-2025/press-releases-2025-july-september/14-august-2025-a-level-uptake-in-stem-grows-but-calls-for-greater-gender-equity

[ 7 ] https://www.embracefs.co.uk/blog/more-women-are-buying-solo-and-the-market-needs-to-catch-up#

[ 8 ] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/nov/24/are-you-one-of-women-solo-holiday

[ 9 ] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/08/PSDT_08.20.20.dating-relationships.final_.pdf