Support for women’s rights and feminist self-identification as antecedents of attitude toward femvertising Miglena Sternadori Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA, and Alan Abitbol College of Arts and Sciences, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, USA Abstract Purpose – Existing research demonstrates that consumers prefer advertising that aligns with their values and beliefs but can also be distrustful of claims of corporate social responsibility. The purpose of this paper is to explore consumers’ perceptions of femvertising in relation to their worldview. Femvertising is defined as “advertising that employs pro-female talent, messages, and imagery to empower women and girls” (Skey, 2015). Design/methodology/approach – A survey of US adults (n = 419) was used to investigate attitudes toward femvertising as they relate to gender, age, support for women’s rights, feminist self-identification, political affiliation and trust in advertising. Findings – Structural equation modeling revealed several antecedents and consequences of attitude toward femvertising. The findings suggest that women’s rights supporters and self-identifying feminists seem highly receptive of femvertising. Originality/value – Taken together, the findings clarify how femvertising can be an effective strategy for marketers and how it fits within the current advertising literature. Keywords Feminism, CSR, Femvertising, Trust in advertising, Support for women’s rights Paper type Research paper Introduction The growing numbers of women consumers with disposable incomes in Western countries has led to efforts by marketers to broaden the interpretations of femininity and feminism. One of the most visible expressions of this cultural shift is femvertising, defined as “advertising that employs pro-female talent, messages, and imagery to empower women and girls” (Skey, 2015, p. 16). Also been called ad-her-tising, femvertising is now a prominent marketing strategy in the USA and around the world (Castillo, 2014; Rodrigues, 2016; Pérez and Gutiérrez, 2017). Its growth arguably reflects some advances for Western women, such as their higher enrollment in postsecondary education, rising consumer power and contributions to politics, sports, and business. “Marketers [...] react to gender-related developments in society and use existing values in a society to promote their brands rather than trying to alter these values,” notes Eisend (2010, p. 436). Dove’s 2004 “Real Beauty” campaign, considered the first example of femvertising (Don, 2017), gained immense popularity by inserting in advertisements individualistic and feel-good ideas about redefining women’s beauty. By 2015, femvertising had become so influential that SheKnows Media launched an annual contest titled #Femvertising Awards (Monllos, 2015)[1]. Though the middle-class and heteronormative characters in femvertising ads challenge only stereotypes about (un)feminine appearances and behaviors rather than power dynamics at the societal level, femvertising still seems radically progressive compared to the ads of the past century. Spears and Amos (2014) show that the depictions of women in ads over the twentieth century have been contingent on social and economic high and low points, but even in the most progressive times, the emphasis has been on women’s sexual and bodily freedoms rather than on their financial, career or athletic successes. Eisend’s (2010) meta-analysis of 1971-2005 data on gender stereotypes in ads helps to contextualize the success of femvertising. During this period, women were four times less likely than men to speak in ads, three times more likely to be presented as a product user than an authority, four times more likely to be in a dependent or auxiliary role and 3.5 times more likely to appear at home than work. Unsurprisingly, many women consumers have reported resenting these limited portrayals of women in advertising (Ford et al., 1991). While femvertising commercials are likely to have been extensively pretested, few academic studies have investigated how audiences perceive, interpret and use femvertising (Abitbol and Sternadori, 2016; Drake, 2017; Kapoor and Munjal, 2017). This study aims to fill the gap in the literature by using a national survey of US adults, about their attitudes toward femvertising as they relate to numerous variables. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0736-3761.htm Journal of Consumer Marketing 36/6 (2019) 740–750 © Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 0736-3761] [DOI 10.1108/JCM-05-2018-2661] Received 1 May 2018 Revised 5 December 2018 2 April 2019 Accepted 8 April 2019 740