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Guidelines regarding sex discrimination in advertising
Copenhagen, February 1993
- The purpose of the guidelines is to supplement the concept of good marketing practices as described in § 1 of the Danish Marketing Practices Act in order to secure that advertising is in no way deprecatory or contemptuous to women or men because of their sex.
- Advertising, which in a deprecatory or contemptuous manner depict women or men, for instance by reducing persons to sex objects, or by depicting a person's sex in a degrading or sexually discriminating manner, is considered incompatible with good marketing practices.
- Depicting persons in the nude in advertisements is not necessarily improper marketing. If the depiction is not deprecatory or contemptuous it is not required that the depiction must have a natural relation to the commodity or service in question.
- Advertisements which claim or clearly implies that one of the sexes is socially, economically or culturally inferior to the other sex, or that one of the sexes is less skilled, less intelligent or less suitable to solve problems, which physiologically are not related to one of the sexes, are in general considered to be incompatible with good marketing practices.
The guidelines came into force as from April 1, 1993, and replace the previous guidelines of January 1979.
Copenhagen, 25 February 1993
Hagen Jørgensen
Consumer Ombudsman