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Complaint against ‘gender biased’ anti-pokies ad thrown out by ad watchdog

An ad that warns of the consequences of problem gambling, ending with the line ‘Her mum is feeding the pokies’, has had a complaint made against it dismissed by the advertising watchdog.

The ad was accused of being gender biased, because it portrayed only the mother as the problem gambler, ignoring the man’s role in the problem.

The complaint read: “Where is her father? Does the father have no responsibility in raising a child or is the father also feeding the pokies? The ad makes it out that it is the mother’s responsibility: the ad should say HER PARENTS ARE FEEDING THE POKIES.”

The complainant was unaware that the ad was part of a series, each showing a different family situation, and that this ad portrayed a single parent household.

The advertiser responded: “The main point that we would like to emphasise is that this advertisement did not seek in any way to make general commentary on domestic roles in Australian society. This advertisement, while fictional, was specific to and represented one family’s situation. The girl, as we imagined her, was in a single parent family. The ad did not say “mothers should feed their children not poker machines”. Nor did it suggest that gambling problems are exclusive to women or mothers.”

The Advertising Standards Bureau “considered that most members of the community would not interpret the advertisement as suggesting that only women have gambling problems or that only women are responsible for their children.”

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