Only 2 out of 10 women in Asia described themselves as comfortable with the idea of getting older according to a new study by SK-II.
More than half of women in Asia surveyed felt uncomfortable and offended by other people’s view on their status especially with regards to topics about their age or marital status. Almost 72 percent of women in Korea and 62 percent of women in China have experienced this discomfort and scrutiny.
Japan and Korea emerged as the two most extreme countries where women feel unhappy about getting older—almost 6 out of 10 Japanese women and more than half of South Korean women feeling this way. In China, finding a suitable partner for marriage is the biggest cause of concern among single women under 30 with more than 6 out of 10 single Chinese women under 30 sharing this concern.
These findings underline a broader social issue connected to age-related pressure.
As an extension of the brand’s #changedestiny philosophy and in a follow-up to last year’s “Marriage Market Takeover” campaign in China, SK-II is highlighting this topic with “The Expiry Date” campaign which premiered yesterday to showcase the unspoken timelines society places on women and spark a conversation around age-related pressure that women all over Asia, and indeed the world, experience.
The film follows the journey of three women as they pass through stages in life with growing internal and external pressure of timelines placed on them by society—manifested creatively as an increasingly visible physical expiry date imprinted on their forearm.
Providing perspective to this, Dr Sandy To, sociologist and author of acclaimed book China’s Leftover Women (Routledge 2015) added: “Age-related discrimination is a global issue that women have to face nowadays, but especially single women. The pressure becomes very real when she reaches mid-30s, 35 and up. At a certain age, when a woman is single and doesn’t have a family, she’s looked upon as an anomaly.”
Although 70 percent of Asian women describe the pressure they face about getting older as internal, a majority wants to open up and talk about these topics. Across Asia, more than 7 out of 10 women state that anxiety stemming from ageing is something they want to discuss with others.
In Malaysia alone, 40 percent of women under 30 years old feel that they feel pressurized by what society thinks of them. 44 percent of women do feel a bit of pressure about turning older, with a majority of them citing deteriorating health as a major concern. However in Malaysia, finding a life partner and getting pressured into marrying before a certain age is relatively not a major concern.
Beyond the film, SK-II hopes to help remove the stigma around age-related pressure by encouraging a regional social movement under the hashtag “#INeverExpire” — creating a welcoming arena for women to share their inner thoughts on the subject.
At SK-II, we launched #ChangeDestiny two years ago as an ongoing movement to start conversations and challenge the fundamental belief that destiny is set at birth. In the following years, we continued to fuel discussions around issues women face as part of #ChangeDestiny. With “The Marriage Market Takeover”, we found that the pressure to get married before 25 and the fear of being labeled as “Leftover Women” after 27 was the single largest tension among single women in China. Overwhelming interest and response to this campaign from women all over the world led us to discover that age-related pressure was not just an issue concerning women in China alone, but indeed a universal one. With “The Expiry Date” film, we made the proverbial expiry date many women feel into a real one to illustrate the growing internal and external age-related pressure women face. SK-II hopes to encourage a global and Pan-Asian discussion to promote the message that everyone should be able to feel proud of what they’ve achieved and who they are, regardless of age and gender and should not be constrained by artificial timelines and expiry date labels placed on them by society,” said Sandeep Seth, Brand Director, Global SK-II.
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