'Education & media can pace up the bridging of gender divide'

The Indian media has more stereotypical depictions of women on screen due to several unconscious biases, which may not always be an apt representation of reality. Media can help pace up the bridging of the gender divide. These were the major takeaways from the first knowledge session held on the second day of Goafest 2024. 

The session titled "Gender-Sensitive Marketing: Navigating The New Consumer Landscape" began with the moderator Kranti Gada, a Management Committee Member of the India Chapter of International Advertising Association and Founder of NeOwn.in bringing in unconscious biases. She also mentioned a study by the UNICEF and Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media that analysed 1000 advertisements from India to conclude that most present women in domestic setups play mothers, wives and daughters-in-law. 

The panelists for this session included Chandni Shah, the Chief Operating Officer of FCB Kinnect; Darshana Shah, Head of Marketing & Customer Experience at Aditya Birla Capital; Kailashnath Adhikari, Business Head of Sri Adhikari Brothers and Managing Director of GovernanceNow; Rajdeepak Das, the Chief Creative Officer at Publicis Groupe South Asia and Chairman Leo Burnett South Asia and Ram Madhvani,  Filmmaker, Producer and Founder of Equinox Films, Ram Madhvani Films & Equinox Virtual. 

Darshana Shah said that while she sees very few women in India in CXO roles, her team makes a conscious effort to portray women in positions of power. Madhvani also mentioned how script writers ensure their content pass the Bechdel test that is a measure to assess good representation of women on screen. Das agreed saying that it has become a part of the standard operating procedure for marketers to evaluate gender sensitivity in their scripts. However, he believes that brands also need to put more thought into gender ergonomics when designing their products. 

Das gave the example of the education rate of women in India which was 8.9% in 1951, 64% in 2011 and 92.5% in 2021. He points out that it takes time to do away with thousands of years worth of taboos but the numbers show the progress being made. He also cited a United Nations report that said at the current rate, it will take 286 years to bridge the gender divide in our society. “However, education and media are two industries that can help pace up the building of this bridge,” he said. 

Adhikari spoke about how several studies have shown how countries have lost out economically when they don't have women participating in economic activities equitably. “Way back in 1995, my mother directed a TV show called Damini wherein the protagonist was a female journalist. It is sad to note that she dealt with the topic at hand so well but today we have regressed instead of progressing in terms of female portrayals on television,” he said. 

Chandani Shah pointed out that influencers the gen Z that her company engaged with seem to be largely gender blind. She also told an example of how young executives at Google pointed out that ‘Creativity is King’ was not gender sensitive prompting the company to change the tagline to ‘Creativity Rules’. 

Darshana brought up the #PaisaHaiPower campaign of Aditya Birla to say that covid has empushed women from all stratas of the society to take charge of their finances. 

The panel also spoke of some stereotypical presentations of women that needed to be changed urgently. These included always presenting women as strong and virtuous beings, not allowing them to have vulnerabilities or failures, lack of smart and funny women on screen and very little representation of women in sports.