MUMBAI: India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) has announced "IAA Gender Sensitisation Drive" the components of which seek to fundamentally change the deep routed bias against women.
The initiative has an acronym "VOW" standing for "Violence on Women" which we seek to stop consciously doing our bit and taking a vow to get rid of this bane in our society.
The initiative consists of two segments. Gender sensitisation Seminars for content creators: The first part of the drive would be to hold a series of Seminars across India to sensitise content writers in film and TV industry, story writers (in print media) and in advertising, to guard against typifying women and on other gender nuances, and create focused awareness about the right way to project women across media.
The Seminars would be addressed by experts in the field and also people of the communications industry.
The first one is scheduled in Mumbai on 16 February. IAA is hoping to have Union Minister of Women and Child Development Krishna Tirath to inaugurate it.
Seminars are also being planned in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune in the next few months.
The second segment is multi-media advertising campaign against ‘eve teasing‘: The initiative is a national advertising campaign that will use the creative resources of the communications industry and the strength of media linkages to use creative communications to try and change behavioral patterns in a manner that would benefit women. Eve Teasing has been identified as the critical issue that needs to be addressed.
IAA president Srinivasan K Swamy said, "eve teasing is seen as the mother of most evils affecting women. Today‘s eve teaser is tomorrow‘s molester, and could be a future rapist. It is necessary to nip this in the bud itself. Research and experience of experts in the field like UNFPA and leading NGO‘s like Laadli have also suggested this subject as the critical one to address."
A national contest would be run inviting entries from creative people all over the country on how to tackle this issue through effective communication.
The entries for this Contest would be judged by the best creative minds in the communications industry and short list some good campaigns; and a jury consisting of leaders from a cross section of society and NGOs would then select the winning campaign.
The IAA would fund the production of this winning entry and use its media linkages to run the campaign on all newspapers and TV channels across the country.
