Can you smell Gender biases in life insurance’s commercial ads?
By Arupa
Source: Screenshots from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq7AVNyDe5Q
"Hamari beti hi, hamara beta hain".
Kyun nahi hamari beti, hamari beti hi hai.
Beti ko beti hi rahne dijay, ye beti ki apna parichay hain.
I am expressing my own point of view based on my experience, continuous unlearning and learning process.
As Gandhi ji said, " Be the change".
Change starts from I. We all are responsible for our own thoughts and actions. Thus, only we ourselves can change our attitude and actions.
Information acts as a catalyst. It helps us to grow as a better person day by day. The journey holds internalizing and practicing it, believing that it is our responsibility. We as a society have the responsibility to inform and educate each other progressively.
Well articulated, easy to understand information has more impacts. Here, I think Ad maker plays an important role. Commercial Advertisement is also one of the important tools to educate the viewers and connect with them. We, if not always, sometimes relate some commercial advertisement to our own life, and get motivation also.
Here, I am keeping my view points on one of the commercial advertisements by Life Insurance Corporation of India (LICI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq7AVNyDe5Q
LICI is one of the leading Life Insurance companies in our country. As we all know that the term INSURANCE means protection from financial loss or financial risk management. In a family, both the male and female members always use different mechanisms to save their money for uncertainty.
This commercial ad kicks off with a beautiful opening song, a bunch of kids, a box of colourful dreams and of course a man helping those young kids to see through that box. Till then it was going well. Now as the young kids were stepping to see their dreams for the future, this is what exactly they are shown. First there is a girl with a middle aged man (hopefully her father) is going for a roller coaster ride, before the ride a safety personnel is fixing the girl’s safety. Simultaneously, they showed a few cases of required safety in stunts performed by professionals, a mother who is taking care of her child, a merry-go-round full of the kids, an elderly couple getting ready for skating, a young couple getting ready for a boat-ride and the safety personnel helping them at every step.
In this advertisement, it is showing that LICI is everywhere in the different forms of caretaker at most of the places. Consequently, all the caretakers are male except in one place where the mother has shown taking care of her child. Most importantly, in the couple goals’ segment the safety personnel in each of the rides has shown protecting the male counterpart. Literally conveying that men need life protection, that is a term cover life insurance plan. Moreover, showing the fact of womxn only responsible to take care of a child, and her utmost priority in life should be a good mother, where a father is equally responsible for it. But the father (male counter in a household) is shown as a financial caretaker, not the emotional one. He is responsible for more crucial stuff, he deals with numbers, manages the accounts and plans for children’s future, education and so on. While the mother is the emotional powerhouse of the family. She has to be a support system and more obviously the cry pillow of the family. She will be draining all her energy in their household work, just to keep them in pace in their life. At the end of the day, her efforts will be accredited under a no-paid 24*7 work or rather as a responsibility towards the family; followed by winning the best mother’s badge.
If you feel that you still can’t see these problems in this very commercial ad then just go for one more run. Now you try to find why there is a problem in this beautiful commercial ad. Why it hurts when the contribution of a womxn is not taken under consideration. The issue is in our conditioning, we are not able to see the problems around us, because we are practicing them and slowly normalizing them successfully. In reality if you try to come out of the stereotype thinking, reflect, calculate in monetary terms regarding this all the day to day activities including household work, caring activities then you will find both the partners are needed to equally contribute in these.
Therefore, commercial advertisement has to include these components of equal opportunities, participation, contribution, rights of genders and at the same time equal sharing of responsibilities for happy families thereby influencing the society, nation and world.
Today, I will end with a question “Can’t we just stop showing gender stereotyping in our commercials?” Can we make more Gender Sensitive or inclusive?
If you think you are an ally, then let us hear your voice.. As we believe that our Commercials can be better. Agar kuch dikhana hi hain toh kuch achha dikhao (in English: If you are communicating something then let’s make it worthy and sensitive) Commercials can create change. #CommercialsForChange.
By Arupa
She is a Content Writer and is a mother of two and half years old daughter, and both of them are growing and learning together. She loves traveling to different places and learning from the people. She has worked on public health, nutrition and food security in Arunchal Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand for over a decade. She believes in positivity as her biggest strength. She tries hard to hold it and carry forward to the people she comes across.
