French TV station advert aiming to celebrate its female presenters pulled for being 'sexist'

France 3's advert showed an untidy family home and posed the question "where are the women?"

An unattended iron burning a man's shirt was among the apparent disorder in a family home portrayed in the advert (France 3)

An advert by a French television station aiming to highlight the number of female presenters it employs has been pulled after it was branded sexist.

France 3, the second largest French public television channel which is a part of the Frances Televisions group, decided that its advert would not air on the country’s television screens after the negative reaction a clip of it received on Twitter.

The advert showed an apparently disordered family home with a burning cooker in the kitchen, a messy children’s bedroom, untidy cupboards and an unattended iron burning a man’s shirt.

The piece then asked “where are the women?”, which it answered with “on France 3”.

“Most of our hosts are hostesses,” it said, emphasising the number of female presenters working on the television station.

Along with the video clip, France 3 tweeted: “More different, more modern, more feminine! France 3 affirms its values through this new campaign that showcases presenting!”

But social media users were far from impressed.

Tweets condemning the advert included: “Female = cleaning, ironing, taking care of kids and shoes!!” and “nothing more than a bunch of sexist clichés”.

Another Twitter user tweeted: “France 3 trumpeted success with hiring women by showing what happens at home when mommy is at work. The ad bombed.”

“What is the message exactly? Whether your presenters have deserted their work ‘natural’? I.e. cleaning, tidying, cooking, etc.,” another asked.

Pascale Boistard, France’s Secretary of State for Women’s Rights, tweeted that the advert “does not seem like a good way to promote professional equality”.

Delphine Ernotte, the channel’s first female chief, later apologised, saying she had not seen the advert ahead of its release and had ordered it to be pulled, according to the BBC.

The advert, which was due to be shown on the nation’s television screens for three weeks, will not now be shown at all.

This summer, feminist group Osez le Feminisme literally took to the streets of Paris to recognise the contribution of women to French society, after discovering just 2.6 per cent of the city's streets had been named after notable females.

The group created its own versions of the city’s iconic blue plaques and stuck them over the official names of roads which had been named after men.