Femvertising in advertising

Abstract

One of the reasons for the slowdown of economic development in a country is the gender gap. Even though this gap is fading away, the process is very slow. There are a lot of influencing factors for this slow process, one of which is advertisements which still follows the gender stereotypes. For centuries, advertisers have been portraying women in sexist roles like upbringing children, doing household chores, etc. So even if women are present in advertising frequently, they are presented in an inferior manner irrespective of their capabilities. Until few years ago, we have seen ads wherein men play the powerful role (active role) in the ad and women are portrait as timid, calm, dreamy and helpless (passive role). A paradigm shift was observed in the Indian culture due to various reasons like globalization and modernization of Indian economy . Women started working and that increased the value of her role in a family. Now with more financial freedom, women started to assert themselves. They started developing self-respect and self-identity. The marketers soon realized that they can’t cast