Empowered Women Get Paid for their Work
Hey loves!
As a content creator, I get a ton of emails each week about sponsored content. I turn down 99% of the offers because they do not fit my content, I don't like the product, etc. But even when I like a product and I am open to doing a collaboration with the brand, things do not always work out. One thing, which has actually happened to me multiple times, is that brands reached out about campaigns regarding female empowerment, but were not willing to pay me for promoting their products.
To me, this tells me immediately that "female empowerment" is a nice marketing buzzword that they like to use to generate profits, but that they have not fully understood it. As a woman, one of the things which make me feel empowered is getting paid fairly for my work. Empowered women know their worth and they charge it - and they do not undersell themselves. When you run a female empowerment campaign and try to promote it by not even paying the female content creators working for you, then you have missed the point of female empowerment.
The situation is, of course, different if the organisation is a non-profit. If a non-profit reaches out and has no budget for marketing, that is perfectly fine for me. But if you are a company for profit and you expect to benefit financially from using the term "female empowerment", then I expect you to respect the women promoting your products enough to pay them.
To me, using labels such as "female empowerment" (but also other labels like "ally of the LGBTQIA+ community") should come with responsibilities for brands. If you use a social movement for marketing, I expect you to live up to it. And I know that there are a thousand and one reasons that brands can come up with for why they cannot pay content creators - "we're a startup", "budget is tight during the pandemic",... But honestly, your excuses are not my problem (as arrogant as that may sound). I paid creators for their work when I hardly made 60 dollars a month from YouTube and never complained or tried to bargain for paying less because I respect content creators enough to pay them what their work is worth. Did I make a profit from that in the beginning? No. But can I say today that I treated everyone, whose work I used, fairly? Yes.
Personally, I have never put on any of my pages that I am about female empowerment or anything like that - because I do not think that I am doing enough to claim such a big label. Nonetheless, I am doing my best to contribute to it, but I do not scream out into the world that I am a great representative for empowerment. But if you want to use a label like "female empowerment" to represent yourself, that puts a big responsibility on your shoulders.
So when it comes to buying products that try to market themselves by associating themselves with social movements, I would recommend researching what they are actually doing for the cause.
Lots of Love,
Elena
