When money takes centerstage, no one wants to talk about gender: Smriti Irani

The Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Zubin Irani has expressed concerns that the entertainment and advertising industry did not value women. This has led to repeated offences of indecent and stereotypical portrayal of women still being a menacing issue even in the 21^st century, she said while speaking at the launch of the Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI) guidelines on harmful gender stereotypes in advertisements.

“It’s 2022 and we are saying we are just beginning to bring a change for gender representation in media. My question is to everyone, why do we just begin now! There have been several women who have fought for this cause, sometimes harming their own reputation and yet we have to get the central ministries involved for pulling down an insensitive deo ad (referring to the latest controversial Layer’r Shot ad).”

Insisting that it was high time the creative industry and brands started taking the agenda of gender more seriously, Irani said: “If you look at the recent ad that had to be pulled down by the I&B ministry, it was not just a brand creating such problematic content. There was a whole team behind it, there were agencies involved who created and sold these ads, and then there were channels that ran these ads because it was serving them well financially. I will say the harsh truth: when money takes centerstage, no one wants to talk about gender. It turns out to be an expensive agenda for the industry.”

Irani, who too started her acting career by working in ads, further noted, “Some would say that I come from the same industry (that I am critiquing) and that’s true. But when I started off in advertising, I was facing the camera promoting sanitary pads. And now, the same medium is talking about ‘men will be men’.”

She noted that the women’s portrayal in media would only improve when people would stop seeing them as objects and in redundant ways of how a woman (and her role) is manifested in the society.

“While there are women who are happy with the incremental change that has been made in the advertising industry, women of my generation are a bit more impatient. It is time not only for the men but also for the women in the advertising industry to step up. This is a very important move, and I believe that there is a long journey to be undertaken to turn the thinking but it's required now. Work in this area must move with more and more speed and organisations like ASCI should lead this, the action beginning with its member base,” she said while signing off her address.

ASCI’s guidelines on harmful gender stereotypes in advertising encourage advertisers and creators to deploy the SEA (Self-esteemed – Empowered – Allied) framework that guides stakeholders in imagining as well as evaluating portrayals of gender in their advertising by building empathy and aiding evaluation, as well as the 3S framework, which provides a checklist to guard against tropes and implicit stereotypes that creep into advertising. While the guidelines focus on women, they also provide guardrails for the depiction of other genders.