IAA takes up cause for women; launches gender sensitisation campaign

To stop violence on women, it plans to hold seminars to sensitise content writers and mount a national campaign against eve teasing

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | January 24, 2013

Srinivasan K Swamy, President of the India Chapter of International Advertising Association (IAA), announced in New Delhi yesterday the 'IAA Gender Sensitisation Drive' to fundamentally change the deep routed bias against women. The initiative has an acronym, VOW, standing for 'Violence on Women', and the IAA aims to stop this and take a vow to get rid of this scourge 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 the film and TV industry, storywriters (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 leading lights of the communications industry. The first one is already scheduled in Mumbai on February 16, 2013. 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.

Multi-media ad campaign against eve teasing: The second 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 behavioural patterns in a manner that would benefit women. Eve teasing has been identified as the critical issue that needs to be addressed.

IAA President 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.” He added, “Research and experience of experts in the field like UNFPA and leading NGOs 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 shortlist some good campaigns. An elite jury consisting of leaders from a cross-section of society and NGOs would select the winning campaign. IAA would fund the production of this winning entry and use its strong media linkages to run the campaign in all newspapers and TV channels across the country.

Kaushik Roy, Chairman, IAA Public Service Committee, said, “You will realise that in a period of about three months we will have a concentrated burst of positive attention on the importance of women's issues. We believe that such an initiative conducted by the entire communications industry led by the IAA would have a very salutary effect on the burning issues confronting women today.”

Pradeep Guha, IAA Regional Director (Asia Pacific), who was present at the meeting, said, “This is yet another instance of the IAA taking the lead and showing how the power of communications could be used for a good cause. This would go a long way in sensitising people on a very important issue.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com