IAA launches a major Gender sensitization drive to stop Violence On Women

Srinivasan K Swamy President of the India Chapter of International Advertising Association (IAA) announced in New Delhi today the “IAA Gender Sensitization Drive” the components of which seeks 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 off this scourge in our society.

The initiative consists of two equally important segments.

Gender sensitization Seminars for content creators: The first part of the drive would be to hold a series of Seminars across India to sensitize 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 a galaxy of experts in the field and also leading lights of the communications industry. The first one is already scheduled in Mumbai on 16th February. IAA is hoping to have the Hon’ble Union Minister of Women and Child Development
Smt Krishna Tirath to inaugurate it.

Seminars are also being planned in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune in the next few months and more could be scheduled.

Multi-media advertising 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 behavioral patterns in a manner that would benefit women. Eve Teasing has been identified as the critical issue that needs to be addressed. Swamy, President of IAA 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 further added “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 an elite 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 strong media linkages to run the campaign on all newspapers and TV channels across the country.

Kaushik Roy, Chairman, IAA Public Service Committee, said “You will realize, 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 lead 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 added that “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 sensitizing people on a very important issue.”

Arunabh Das Sharma, President, Times of India Group, said, “TOI has always associated with such initiatives. The initiative taken by IAA is a very nice initiative. I feel that this creative step would create a change and awareness because at societal level communication plays an important role. The communication route adopted is very fine. There will be series of advertisements in TOI. We will try to create as much awareness as we can.”