From OLX to Anouk, here's how the ad industry is getting women empowerment all wrong

We have grown up hearing advertisement jingles like “Hema, Rekha, Jaya aur Sushma… sabki pasand Nirma,” because that’s what a woman’s ‘pasand’ is supposed to be — washing powder. In some other advertisements we have seen how mothers cribbed about their child not eating gharka dal chawal and the solution was Bournvita or Complan or even Maggi. There were also doctors asking women to use Dettol sabun to protect their children from khatarnak kitanu. We have also seen how ready-made masalas and pressure cookers have helped women impress their families. We sometimes saw working women, may be a dentist in a lab coat suggesting Pepsodent toothpaste for a child, because she uses it too, since she is a mother. [caption id=“attachment_2537950” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Radhika Apte in the anouk ad.[/caption] If television ads were anything to go by, the woman’s place was in the kitchen, raising their children (washing their hands and brushing their teeth and ensuring that they wore the whitest uniforms) and making sure that her bartans (untensils) were devoid of chiknai (grease) . But times have changed. The priorities of this generation’s Hema and Sushma is not the kifayati sabun (not so expensive soap) anymore. More and more women are joining the workforce, creating a new pool of buyers that the advertisement industry can tap into. In the pursuit of attracting such customers, new age brands want new age ads and the ad industry is trying to change itself to keep up with this need. Women in ads are now corporate bosses and entrepreneurs who supposedly have the world at their feet. But have they been able to come out of the patriarchal hangover? Not quite. A recent advertisement by Anouk, starring Radhika Apte, went viral over the weekend for the supposed feminist message it carries. A pregnant Shaheen is seen questioning her boss on why a male colleague was chosen over her for a promotion. The boss in turn asks her to ‘focus on her child’ and take it easy. But Shaheen is empowered, so she decides to quit her job and start her own firm.

The message, on the surface, is a powerful one. But it is deeply problematic on several accounts. First, this only looks at a certain class of extremely privileged women who actually have the funds to start their own firm. For several middle class or even lower middle class working women this could only be a dream. Money is not the only factor. Sometimes even the most empowered women succumb to societal pressure of taking care of their new borns and leave their jobs. The first thing most women who want to work after giving birth are asked is who will look after the child. Secondly, the solution is not a woman changing her life around for a job. While more and more women are joining the workforce in across the country, the office space still caters to the needs of men. The constraints of a job curbs a woman’s independence of choosing to work after having a child. Speaking of independence brings me to the latest OLX TVC: A woman waits for her husband to pick her up from work. Husband is late. She has to take a taxi back home. That night she tells her husband, “Pata hai Nitin, shaadi se pehle main zyada independent thi.” Then we see a diligent Nitin finding a solution on OLX. He sells his fancy sedan so that he can buy two small cars — one for him and one for his wife — so that she gets back her ‘independence’.

The ad title ‘Adhe tere - Adhe mere’ tries to give a message that for couple should be equal and a woman should have all the freedom in the world. But it fails to do so because it depicts a woman’s independence from the narrow prism of privilege and patriarchy. Not all couples have sedans to sell. And a truly independent working woman would not have to depend on her husband’s chivalry. This ad also shows how men too are victims of patriarchy and are expected to be the knight in shining armour who has to provide for his damsel in distress independent wife. It leaves us with the feeling that a woman may be working, but a man still is the provider. Last year we saw a Twitter debate after Airtel aired its TVC where a man’s boss is his wife. While she puts her foot down at work — tells him to work late and finish a project — at home she is a doting wife who cooks what looks likes a five course meal for the husband.

This is again a stereotyping of women because no matter how empowered the woman is at work, at home her place is the kitchen. While several people who would argue that it was her choice, we cannot forget that patriarchy is so deep rooted in our mind sets that we cannot call out the sexism in the ad. The portrayal of women in ads has been a controversial debate for quite a long time. The new ads do try to break the stereotypes but falter. They end up putting men and women in the same stereotypes they are trying to fight — that the woman’s place is at home cooking, or taking care of her child, and the man is the provider. This perhaps points to a larger problem of gender roles being deeply etched in our minds. Despite the leaps of progress women have made in workspaces they are still viewed from a certain biased perspective. While some have hailed the ads for being pathbreaking (read here and here), they are missing the inherent sexism that is giving rise to a half-baked and problematic discourse on women’s empowerment.