Context: UNICEF and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media released a report titled “Gender Bias and Inclusion in Advertising in India”.
Key highlights

• The research measures over 1,000 television and YouTube advertisements aired across India in 2019.
• The study finds that female characters dominate screen time (59.7%) and speaking time (56.3%).
• But one of the drivers of this is their depiction for selling cleaning supplies, food and beauty products to female consumers.

A greater percentage of female characters is depicted as married than male characters.

• Female characters are three times more likely to be depicted as parents than male characters.
• Male characters are more likely to be shown making decisions about their future than female characters.

The women are twice as likely to be shown making household decisions than male characters.

• Female characters are more likely to be shown doing the following activities than male characters — shopping; cleaning & preparation of meals.
• Male characters are more likely to be shown as smart than female characters.
• Two-thirds of female characters (66.9%) in Indian ads have light or medium-light skin tones — a higher percentage than male characters (52.1%).
• Female characters are also invariably thin, but male characters appear with a variety of body sizes in Indian advertising.

Concerns

• Female representation in Indian ads is still marginalised by colourism, hyper-sexualisation, and without careers or aspirations outside of the home.
• Misrepresentation and harmful stereotypes of women in advertising have a significant impact on women and young girls.
• They view themselves and their value to society based on the stereotypes.

Recommendations of UNICEF

• Increased representation of women and girls across age, social class, skin tone and other diversity indicators.
• Promotion of diverse templates of beauty and avoiding regressive beauty norms of women and girls being only fair and thin.
• More women and girls portrayed as leaders, especially in the public sphere.
• Positive gender norms around body and attitudes towards healthy eating.