Fahrenheit 451

In their infinite wisdom, members of the European Parliament have come up with another brilliant idea:

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Wednesday adopted a new report that calls on member states to make a greater effort to monitor how gender is portrayed in advertising. Constant images of women in the kitchen while men clean their cars outside are reinforcing sexist stereotypes, the study argues.

The non-legally binding report, which was drafted by Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson, also calls on EU institutions to monitor the implementation of existing European laws on sex discrimination.

"MEPs call on the EU institutions and member states to develop awareness actions against sexist insults or degrading images of women and men in advertising and marketing," the lawmakers said in a statement after adopting the report by 504 votes in favor, 110 against and 22 abstentions.

The report also called on the media and advertising to set good examples from a gender perspective.

Before the vote, Svensson told the German news agency DPA that people are often not aware of how much they are influenced by advertising. "When women and men are portrayed in a stereotypical way the consequence may be that it becomes difficult in other contexts to see women and men's resources and abilities in areas other than those of the traditional gender roles."

I'm for it! In fact, I think that all books containing representations of women cooking or men fighting in war should be burned. While we're at it, we should also throw in books in which academics wear glasses, construction workers drink beer or toddlers can't do arithmetic.

That should ensure the European energy supply for the next 100 years or so.

(A related post. And another. And don't get me started on this.)