2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

By Lebanese law, men and women are not equal. The discriminatory laws reduce women to “half citizens”. The challenge was to create enough awareness among the Lebanese society. The main objective was to foment enough popular participation in order to be able to pressure the relevant authorities and concerned parties. We started online, asking women to add mustaches to their profile and change their gender, to become men. The discriminatory laws were simplified into statements to be shared, and an online petition was circulated. NGOs, activists, reporters, bloggers, helped build hype by generating their own content. On March 8th, International Women's Day, women dressed as men. By nightfall, 20 meters away from parliament, the movement was joined by hundreds of women. The event made it to the 8 o'clock news on leading local and Arab channels. We received international exposure being featured in magazines, radios, newspapers, as well as numerous regional and international blogs & websites. The movement got 1.2 million USD of free media coverage. On August 4th 2011, i.e., 7 months after the start of the “No Rights No women” movement, The Honor Crimes Law was abolished. The Domestic Violence law is now in final study by the parliament.

The Brief

The research elicited the lack of awareness by Lebanese women in regards to this generic problem, further accentuated by the anemic attitude of the Lebanese public authorities. We wanted the Lebanese community (men and women) and the lawmakers to imagine a world without women, in hopes that proper action will be taken to change the status quo. We named both the movement and the campaign “No Rights, No Women”. In other words by turning women into men (dressing and acting like men) we wanted to simulate how a world deprived of women would change the natural order of things.

Results

Everything started on the virtual platform with a hope that Lebanese community would react in mass. Significant crowd sourcing was achieved and the buzz had ripple effects across the globe in the real world with an incredible 1.2 million USD of free media coverage. (Stat - IPSOS). This coverage included Over 20 leading regional magazines and newspapers Over 57 international blogs & websites Top 3 local and Arab channels Our Facebook page was viewed over 16,700 times in only 1 week On August 4th 2011, i.e., 7 months after the start of the “No Rights No women” movement, The Honor Crimes Law was abolished. This was considered a turning point in Lebanese legislative history. The Domestic Violence law is now in final study by the parliament.

Execution

We started 4 weeks before International Women’s Day, by asking women to add mustaches to their profile and to change their genders on Facebook. The discriminatory laws were simplified into statements and shared as statuses, posts and tweets. Local and regional bloggers, became instantly intrigued by “the women with mustaches”, and wrote about the cause helping create hype for the event. Our page became 1) a forum uniting NGOs, activists and Lebanese women from around the world 2) “gallery” of user generated content inspired by the campaign. On March 8th, we took the movement to the real world. That morning, women went out dressed as men. Corporations and universities woke up to offices with no women. By nightfall, 20 meters away from parliament, hundreds of women came together to walk for equality.

The Situation

By Lebanese law, men and women are not equal. Lebanese women have no right to pass their nationality to their children. They have no custody rights. There is no law that protects women against domestic violence. When we were approached by a group of Lebanese women fighting for women’s rights, to create a campaign for their new organization we saw an opportunity to change the status quo. Building on their noble efforts we decided to engage in a wide spread full-integrated campaign where PR played a decisive role in achieving our objectives.

The Strategy

We wanted to quickly engage the largest amount of people, by creating a simple act that would generate the maximum impact. The digital platform was the starting point where crowd sourcing could be achieved but leaving it at that just wasn’t enough. A tangible physical act had to follow in order to shock and awe the target audience. We wanted women to give up their “womanship” to claim their citizenship, by becoming “men” (in the very conservative society found in Lebanon).