Sainsbury's removes clothing advert after complaints about women's safety

Sainsbury's has removed a clothing advert and apologised to customers following online backlash that accused the supermarket of dismissing women's safety.

The in-store advert that displayed a woman wearing a £24 midi wrap dress outside had the following tagline: "For walks in the park or strolls after dark".

The poster has since been axed by the supermarket after many people on Twitter pointed out the dangers of women walking in the dark which can sadly sometimes have deadly consequences.

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Nathalie Gordon highlighted this in a now viral tweet with over 24,0000 likes as she shared the image and wrote: "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA THEY THINK WE STROLL IN THE DARK HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA."

"If you're a person who likes walking/strolling at night and feel safe doing so, I'm genuinely happy for you.

"But please don't have a go at people who don't feel the same," she explained in a thread.

"There are a lot of well documented studies, reports and research that has been done around the safety of women. If you feel like they do not represent your lived experience, then you are lucky."

While others agreed as one person wrote: "I wonder if there were any women on the team who approved this?"

"Luckily her hand is cropped out so you can’t see her white knuckles where she is gripping her keys between her fingers," another person said.

Someone else added: "Clearly a man thought this sales pitch up."

In 2022, an Office of National Statistics survey about about people’s perceptions of safety revealed that a higher proportion of women reported feeling very or fairly unsafe compared with men when walking alone in all settings after dark.

The disparity was greatest “in a park or other open space”, where 82 per cent of women reported feeling very or fairly unsafe, compared with 42 per cent of men.

Sainsbury's has since apologised for the advert and it has been removed from stores.

A spokesperson for the supermarket said: "We're sorry that due to the design, some customers found this sign to be inappropriate and are working to remove these from the store.

"We'll work hard with our agency partner to ensure this doesn't happen again."

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