Privileging The Privileged Gender in Indian Advertising

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In her perceptive and critical analysis of more than 2500 advertisements, Sharada Schaffter focuses on some of the techniques used by advertisers to demonstrate her observation that media treatment of women works to the advantage of men at the expense of the well-being and dignity of women.

She makes readers aware of the taken-for-granted stereotypes of woman as homemaker, sex object and silly, incompetent, inferior, dependent on man, and of man as strong provider, deserving acclamation in every sphere.

She further unveils the unconsciously held beliefs regarding gender (which is a social construct of the biological category of sex) and the manifestation of sex-roles which are played out unthinkingly and also constructed prescriptively in a given society. She goes on to probe the unexamined ideological underpinnings of those beliefs.

Finally, presenting a new code of ethics, she challenges advertisers to re-examine their notions of gender, in order to uphold women's inviolable right to be treated with respect and dignity, as human beings.

Dissecting advertisements in meticulous detail, she draws upon current literature in the social sciences with well chosen citations, to frame and support her essay. This economically presented and elegant book with seminal bibliography can serve as a felicitous model for approaches and procedures to be used in disciplines such as women's studies, gender studies, media analysis, advertising, ethics, development communication and television analysis.

A graduate of the University of Madras, Sharada Schaffter, whose vocation was mathematics, gave up teaching for her avocation of social activism, to work as a volunteer with the Women's Forum for Social Action, at the Institute for Development Education, Chennai. Having been trained in Development and Group Communication and in Management in Rural Reconstruction, at inter- national institutes in the Philippines, she worked with women in villages near Chennai.

She has been a resource person at workshops on "Women and the Media" in Hong Kong and in Sri Lanka, and has made various presentations in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.

She is member of the Asian Network of Women in Communication, now located in Manila, extending over thirteen Asian countries, an off- shoot of the World Association for Christian Communication headquartered in London. She is Honorary Director of a service organization, Seva Trust.

Historically, women have been non- privileged and disadvantaged across most cultures. Social empowerment of women is the first step towards their long-overdue economic and subsequent political empowerment; and the basic and necessary prerequisite for women's social empowerment is that they be treated with respect and dignity by society and more particularly by its avowed voices, the media, which not only reflect but also shape public attitudes. But current reality here and over a large part of the world militates harshly against this essential requirement.

I, therefore, begin by enunciating just one of the problems that I perceive: not just the stereotypical but unethical and offensive representations of women in advertisements that work to their detriment and also succeed in perpetuating the gender hierarchy that should be put to an end.

I raise awareness of the issue by analysing advertisements and unveiling the ingenuity of advertisers.

One course of action that I suggest, to deal with the problem, is a new code of ethics for advertisers.

In order to arrive at conclusions and to substantiate comments, I have used print advertisements in two ways. Most often, only a mention has been made of about two hundred ads. In addition, about sixty have been analysed in detail, mostly with visuals.