NEW YORK, December 9, 2022 – SeeHer, the largest global movement to eliminate gender bias in advertising and entertainment, and Gold House, the leading Asian and Pacific Islander (API) changemaker community, proudly announce the #WriteHerRight: API Women Authentic Representation and Storytelling Guide, a resource that gives storytellers the tools to accurately portray API women across media and advertising. Grounded in one of the largest studies ever conducted on the representation of API women, the guide includes key insights, resources, and solutions to help creatives establish genuine, nuanced depictions of API women across their work.

API women are often portrayed as a monolith, which removes the complexities and nuances of various API cultures and increases negative stereotypes. The guide features key questions for creatives to consider when depicting API women, covering topics such as contextual representation, personal attributes, language, family, culture, religion, career paths, and intersectionality. The guide also encourages storytellers to consider differences within the incredibly vast API diaspora (East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander, and mixed-race women) and to avoid overdone storylines, stereotypes, and tropes. Additionally, it includes key findings from a survey SeeHer and Gold House conducted in August 2022 with over 1600 respondents –which was one of the largest studies ever conducted on portrayals of API women.

The survey found that three out of four API women are dissatisfied with how they are currently being portrayed in the media; however, API women are overwhelmingly positive (79 percent of respondents) on the outlook for the future of API women in front of and behind the camera. Additionally, 62 percent of respondents agree that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts have resulted in actual change in front of and behind the camera.

“API women represent a broad range of histories, cultures, and lived experiences yet have long been underrepresented or stereotyped in media. SeeHer is committed to helping storytellers showcase diverse, multidimensional API women that reflect the fullness of these cultures,” said SeeHer President Christine Guilfoyle.

“We know that what we see on screen leads to real life consequences,” said Jeremy Tran, COO and Executive Director of Gold House. “The guide is designed to ensure that stories about API women are thoughtfully created not only to dismantle harmful stereotypes, but also, to celebrate the diversity, complexity, and power of API women from all walks of life.”

This is the fourth #WriteHerRight guide developed by SeeHer, who launched the first guide, a tip sheet for showrunners on inclusive storytelling for female characters in 2018. The organization followed with two guides in 2021, the #WriteHerRight guide focused on Black women in partnership with OWN and the #WriteHerRight guide focused on Latinas in partnership with NBCUniversal and Telemundo.  Partners for the API guide include SeeHer members AMC, Meta, Paramount and others. Shutterstock provided the imagery.

About SEEHER
SeeHer is the leading global movement of media, marketing and entertainment leaders committed to the accurate depiction of women and girls in advertising and media. Launched in 2016 by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in partnership with The Female Quotient (The FQ), SeeHer is changing how women are portrayed in media. To help members benchmark success, SeeHer spearheaded the development of the Gender Equality Measure® (GEM®), the first research methodology that quantifies gender bias in ads and programming. GEM® proves that content accurately portraying women and girls dramatically increases both purchase intent and brand reputation. The GEM® methodology quickly became the industry standard, winning the prestigious ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Award, leading to its global rollout in 2018. The movement has expanded its verticals to include sports (SeeHer In Sports), music (SeeHer Hear Her) and health (SeeHer Health.) To learn more, visit SeeHer.com and follow SeeHer on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and Twitter.

About Gold House

Gold House is the leading Asian and Pacific Islander (API) changemaker community, fighting together for socioeconomic equity. Through a suite of innovative programs and platforms, the organization unites, invests in, and promotes API creatives and companies. To learn more, visit www.goldhouse.org or follow @GoldHouseCo on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

About Shutterstock

Shutterstock is the leading global creative platform for transformative brands and media companies. Directly and through its group subsidiaries, Shutterstock’s comprehensive collection includes high-quality licensed photographs, vectors, illustrations, 3D models, videos and music. Working with its growing community of over 2 million contributors, Shutterstock adds hundreds of thousands of images each week, and currently has more than 424 million images and more than 27 million video clips available.

Christa Dallas, SeeHer
Wolf-Kasteler Public Relations
cristad@wk-pr.com