Amul's new ad celebrating women called out for gender stereotyping

Amul is the latest brand to be called out on social media for its ad ‘Celebrating Women’.

The Amul ad:

The brand has captioned the ad ‘Amul celebrates the spirit of every Indian woman who shapes the lives of all her loved ones. They represent the true taste of India’ across platforms.

Apart from its products, Amul is also known for its brilliant moment marketing. But its new ad “celebrating women” has received a series of backlash on Twitter.

Many on social media are alleging the ad to be less of a celebration and more of a regressive and patriarchal upliftment.

The one-minute ad created by FCB India shows a woman serving breakfast to the family, the newly-wed nervous woman cooking in the kitchen and later getting approval for her cooking from her husband, a mother preparing sweets for her son and other similar representation of women in the household. 

Tweets of the people calling out the ad on Twitter:

Women cook, men eat. When @Amul_Coop is not splurging on peddling hate in toxic TV studios, it comes up with cringe-fests like this.

Taste badlo, soch badlo, Amul. https://t.co/GV8JB9ssY8

— anuradha sharma (@NuraRadha) September 14, 2022

The spirit of every Indian woman is in peril.
It’s true that as we move toward the future, our ideologies become repressed! @Amul_Coop this ad shows your deep-rooted patriarchy!

— Nota Voter (@NotaVoter007) September 14, 2022

Cooking is a basic survival skill and food is for one and all. Making the former into a gendered thing is regressive and patriarchal. An inclusive ad that makes men participate in the process would have been a better ad material. This one is quite disappointing

— VJ (@VJ290481) September 14, 2022

Seriously ?? Is all your clock stuck in 1980s or what ?? All Indian women do is "Cook"...hu don't they have any other job ?? . Grow up people...why can't y'all be gender neutral at all ?? Sick ASF ! https://t.co/otRXMyG0qu

— Kanmani Ganguly. (@beingvarsh) September 14, 2022

Recently, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) released guidelines that guard against harmful gender stereotypes. The guidelines stated that gender portrayal and stereotypes are harmful because they lock individuals in certain roles and perpetuate certain dynamics that are detrimental to society. Advertising, through subtle and implicit depictions, reinforces certain harmful stereotypes and overlooks the aspirations of individuals and groups.

As per ASCI’s Guidelines on ‘Harmful Gender Stereotypes’ in advertising, advertisements must not include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm or serious or widespread offence.

While advertisements may feature people undertaking gender-stereotypical roles e.g., a woman cleaning the house or a man going to an office, or displaying gender-stereotypical characteristics, e.g., a man being assertive or a woman being sensitive to others’ needs, they must not suggest that stereotypical roles or characteristics are, always uniquely associated with a particular gender; the only options available to a particular gender; or never carried out or displayed by another gender, the ASCI report highlighted.

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