The advertising campaign has been seen on the back of buses around Dunedin with the words "Girls Girls Girls" in neon-look pink with the words ‘‘hiring now’’ next to it.
It includes pictures of building gear in the background and at the bottom says "think construction" and the address for an Otago Polytechnic web page explaining the advertisement.
"If you’re reading this, you must have seen one of our ads," the web page reads.
"These ads are a bit cheeky, but they’ve got to be — challenging society’s ingrained gender norms isn’t easy!
"We know that working in a male-dominated field might not be smooth sailing. But if our saucy ads encourage you to consider, or just imagine a career in this industry, we’ve succeeded!"
The page notes 90% of the construction workforce is male, that there’s a demand for workers and pay is usually good.
Jobs listed include project and construction managers, quantity surveyors, stonemasons, electricians, engineers and builders.
A senior lecturer in gender studies at the University of Otago, Rebecca Stringer, said Otago Polytechnic got it wrong.
"It isn’t cheeky, it’s tone deaf. Far more positive and just as likely to attract hits on the website would be something celebrating women in construction.
"Not 'here’s some sexism, oops only joking, guess what, we’re for women in construction'."
She said safety on worksites would be a more attractive proposition for women interested in the industry.
"Women don’t just want to know that there’s no sexism, they want unions, they want guarantees of proper work, they don’t want precarious work and they want workplace safety. Just like guys do."
"An advertising campaign promoting a commitment to safety and all of its forms — that’s deeply attractive to a woman looking to work in that industry," Ms Stringer said.
Otago Polytechnic chief executive Phil Ker defended the organisation, saying it had been running a "Women in Construction" campaign to "address the gender imbalance" in the industry.
"One element of our extensive Women in Construction campaign is a Girls Girls Girls visual advertisement, which was conceived by our all-female team of marketers as a tongue-in-cheek component of the broader campaign," he said.
They understood the advert would be polarising but they believed that any controversy was worth it to get the message across.
"We consider the Women in Construction campaign to have been a success — it has generated 58 study applications as a direct result of digital advertising to date. However, we regret any offence caused as a result of the campaign content."
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"our all-female team of marketers"
In 2017, 13% of working age women and 9% of working age men participated in tertiary education. In 2007 it was 17 and 15% respectively.
Seems to me that this all female team isn't doing a very good job in relating to the male population of NZ or even NZ in general.
Get Woke go broke, comes to mind.
As the post-modernist infected humanities sector of our education system take hold, less and less of the NZ population want to engage.
This is why this Labour government is progressively reducing the personal cost of tuition to zero, at the taxpayers expense, regardless of the fact it is the wealthier sector of the population that benefits the most.
NZ education is now more about progressing ideology than educating a population to progress NZ.
If it wasn't for immigration from developing countries, mainly taking their most capable people, net migration would still be in the negatives, as it was under the last Labour government.
A very good example of someone drawing a very long bow. For goodness sakes, what an over reactive complaint, some will look for 'fault' in anything they can. A lot more to worry about out there than this trivia. Pink has been defined as a 'Girls' colour for goodness knows how long. You can even buy pink fluro vests, hard hats and builders aprons. I seriously doubt many would have seen any connection between neon pink and strip clubs. Would Rebecca feel better if the neon was bubble wrapped in Blue, Yellow, White or Purple? Anyway, lets spend thousands redoing the ads before everyone shivels up in horror!
"Senior lecturer in gender studies at the University of Otago"
No need to read further.
If it were an engineering, medical, chemistry, mathematics, or language lecturer - then they could be taken with more than a grain of salt. Why? Because these people teach tangible and useful skills. How to build a bridge or a road. How to fix sick people. How to conduct experiments and work in a laboratory. How to solve mathematical problems. How to write and talk effectively.
What skills do gender studies majors leave Uni with?
The horror the horror, somebody was offended. In the words of Private Frazer "We're doomed".
The horror the horror, stop the bus somebody is offended, in the words of Private Frazer, We're doomed.