Analysis of the feminist and pseudofeminist messages of the ads launched to commemorate the international women's day

The advertising strategy called femvertising is supposed to promote equality and empower women. Femvertising emerges in publicity resulting from the fourth femi-nist wave and the unprecedented feminist mobilizations from 2017 to 2022. However, not all femvertising is empowering; in some cases, its messages are so contraproductive that can be considered antifeminist. This article focuses on the ambivalence in advertising discourses to detect when femvertising does not live up to its name. It analyses 20 advertisements launched on the occasion of the International Women's Day in 11 countries from 2017 to 2022. Through a semiotic-critical discourse analysis, we combine the conceptual frameworks of femvertising and antifeminist resistance to unveil the real nature of the ads. For each commercial, we examine how it complies with femvertising criteria, and whether it resorts to any strategies of the antifeminist resistance. We add a third analytical layer to measure the commercials' success or failure. These categories are quantified through a Likert scale. The majority of these ads avoid sexism and break with gender stereotypes. However, we detect a growing presence of pseudo-feminist messages and anti-feminist resistance. Besides, there is a connection between the messages delivered by the ads and their geographical, social, and political context. We conclude that there is an opportunism in advertising and that the brands still continue to deliver messages in which women are presented as responsible for some problems that affect society as a whole.