Scottish independent craft brewer, BrewDog, is taking on the global scourge of gender pay inequality and combating sexist marketing with the launch of a ‘new’ beer – Pink IPA.

Satirically dubbed Beer for Girls, the ale is BrewDog’s clarion call to close the gender pay gap in the UK and around the world and to expose sexist marketing to women, particularly within the beer industry.

Lazy marketing

BrewDog is using its most iconic beer, Punk IPA, as a weapon in this fight, packaging it in lurid pink and renaming to Pink IPA – a send-up of what it describes as “lazy marketing efforts” targeting the female market.

The brewer will also be serving the beer at 20% cheaper in BrewDog bars to those who identify as women.

With the product being identical to the blue-branded Punk IPA, the brewer intends to trigger questions about why women continue to earn less than their male counterparts, and offer them a discount on the beer equivalent to the gender pay gap.

Furthermore, for four weeks from today, BrewDog will be donating 20% (the gender pay gap in the UK)[1] of its proceeds from bottled Pink IPA and Punk IPA to causes that fight against gender inequality. Pink IPA will also be sold in South Korea, Ireland, Germany, USA and The Netherlands.

BrewDog is also using the Pink IPA campaign to call for clear and consistent reporting around calculating the gender pay gap and what businesses should do to close it.

BrewDog’s approach to tackling the gender pay gap acknowledges the root causes of the widespread under-representation of women in certain industries, particularly in science, technology, education and math (STEM).

As such, the brewery’s donations will go to causes that address current gender disparities and also seek to boost the number of young girls interested in a future in STEM industries.

As the UK’s fastest growing craft brewer, BrewDog is particularly interested and invested in developing a new wave of diversity in brewing.

Proceeds from Pink IPA will be going to:

• The Women’s Engineering Society (WES) a charity and a professional network of women engineers, scientists and technologists that inspire and support girls and women to achieve their potential as engineers, applied scientists and technical leaders.
• 9to5 is one of the largest, most respected national membership organisations of working women in the U.S. dedicated to putting working women’s issues on the public agenda. 9to5’s mission is to build a movement to achieve economic justice by engaging directly with affected women to improve working conditions.

As part of the Pink IPA campaign, BrewDog has launched brewdog.com/pink, which provides information on the gender pay gap in different countries, as well as a video featuring women from the business, and detail on the charities that Pink IPA will support.

Sarah Warman, BrewDog’s global head of marketing, said: “The fact that the gender pay gap is still an issue in 2018 shows that a lot of lip service is being paid, but not enough action is being taken to tackle inequality. We want to accelerate change by empowering more women to make their voices heard and calling out industries and employees that need to do more. With Pink IPA, we are making a statement the only way we know how – with beer.”

“Women make up a small but growing percentage of my peers within the beer industry, and with Pink IPA we are hoping to welcome more people who identify as female into craft beer. It’s an incredible industry to be a part of, and the more women we can get working behind the bar, the more women we can hope to see the other side of it.”

Sarah Warman continued: “Sexism in the beer industry is rife. We can no longer ignore that its existence prevents plenty of incredible women joining our eclectic and exciting industry. There is a long history of products that pander and patronise through harmful, sexist stereotypes and vulgar imagery, and we’re rallying to put an end to this nonsense. The love of beer is not gendered. Beer is universal. Beer is for everyone.”