The International Advertising Association (IAA) organizes a discussion based on research done by UNICEF called #VoiceofChange- which deals with the gender depiction in the Indian advertising industry. The main talk is over what changes come in gender representation and how it becomes salient for marketing, advertising, and media.
The discussion was between some of the most honorable personalities like Rana Barua – CEO of Havas Group India, Kainaz Karmakar – chief creative officer of Ogilvy, Megha Tata – president of the IAA, Subhash Kamath, chairman, Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI)
including many more.
Findings of UNICEF
Dr. Yamin Ali Haque- the representative, gave a brief introduction about gender inequalities. According to her, “Gender socialization is a behavior which can only be learned, its effects women and harms the male. We learn social indications from school, society, and family including marketing. So its become important for the industry to recognize the role they play and be positively equipped.
The report says, both the gender plays a role but women dominating the screen. Also highlighted the unfair implementation like an issue related with age, occupation, sexualization, colorism, etc.
Reel v/s Real life
According to Ashwiny Tiwari, society tries to threatened women when she comes out of their comfort zone. She believes that” The belief of individual depicts their outlook. We had an opportunity to change the tone of people. When one thing is repeatedly told it makes the person feel low. As psychological research is far important than any other research”.
Dr shraddha, reviewing the ads for the campaign for the last 7th year says how the representation of women has evolved. “Now the ads showed are less gender threatening. Most of them are neutral. But women are still modeling typically while the expectation of customers for women showed in ads to be exactly like that”.
Initial Conditioning
Apart from countless values inculcated in children from early ages, educating them about gender is important too, according to Mehta. “We never taught kids about gender equality as part of daily routine. It’s important to educate children and teach them to respect women. If these already happened, we might not have these conversations inline”, he added.
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