Kids interrupting your video calls isn't so cute if you're female, says this Equal Pay Day campaign

Belgian women's rights organization Zij-Kant is the latest advertiser to highlight the chore gap between men and women in the pandemic in a campaign created for Equal Pay Day (March 25 in Belgium, although it's today, March 24, in the U.S.)

The work, by agency Mortierbrigade, includes a social video of parents (both moms and dads) being interrupted by their kids on video calls. It moves from some cute little kids and babies on screen with their fathers to footage of harassed mothers fending off older kids zoombombing them and interrupting their meetings. "Being interrupted at work for once is cute," it says. "Being interrupted all the time sucks." It ends with a message to share tasks equally at home, for more opportunities at work.

As well as the video, which was directed by Leander Hanssen Jr at Caviar, two print executions created with photographer Jef Boes depict fathers concentrating on their computers, while the mother and children around them are a blur of mess and chaos, the mother appearing in multiple places as she multi-tasks. The ads are running as posters and print ads in newspapers.

"We wanted the problem to be perfectly identifiable at first glance and make both women and men think, so that everyone understands that this inequality can be avoided by dividing the household tasks fairly," says Mortierbrigade Art Director Toon Vanpoucke in an email.