The New Nation - Internet Edition

Farizaa Sabreen

The world- wide trend towards consumerism has created an atmosphere in which advertisements habitually portray women primarily as consumers and target girls and women of all ages inappropriately.

The aim of advertisements is to influence someone to buy a thing. A number of surveys indicate that women are treated as commodities in advertising.

Women are estimated to attract men's attention. Women are shown in advertisements totally responsible for household tasks. Our society wants to see women in the acts of cooking, cleaning and child rearing. Beauty and youth are given significance in the representation of women.

Maximum of advertising use women to promote products. Advertisements that target male-identified products, like shaving creams or cigarettes carry pictures of women faces. Female bodies also shown in men's clothing. The people of the ad world know this is appealing if there is an attractive female stay in the ad. Thus a woman's body is used for sexual representation in advertising.

The magazines which have pictures of half-nude women, sell the most number of copies.

Sex and violence are also seen on television, film and even in cartoons and computer games. These raise rape and harassment in not only Bangladesh but the whole world. Women are projected very openly in media.

Several newspaper and television reporters compete to take pictures of the female victims, which is against the media ethic. Advertising representing women as sex objects is general. Various satellite channels demonstrate a lot of sex and nudity.

Our media is a male-dominated world as well as it sees from male's eye. Gender stereotyping is the common in advertisements. We still consider a man as an achiever and decision-maker while we prefer to see women in traditional roles as homemakers and mothers. The women's pages of newspapers focus on fashion, beauty and loads of recipes.

Women are also vastly noticeable in soap operas, where their role is stereotyped. Gender-based stereotyping and lack of diversity and equity exists in commercial advertisements. According to a recent study, about one third of television advertisements discriminated against women.

During the decade, the world advances in information technology and ore women try to come forward to break their stereotyped image. More women are involved in non-traditional careers.

Media can be used as a means of change to develop women's lives and social development. Bangladeshi women must continue to work hard for greater opportunities.

The rise of liberal globalization, western cultural and internet are the culprits of this situation. Some men blamed women for permitting themselves to be exploited as a product.

These advertisements have many negative effects on society. They trigger racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The young boys and girls easily attracted to the glitzy world of advertisement and ignore social and religious values.

As the commercials shows only fair and slim models, the young girls start starving themselves relentlessly. They make girls think that the only thing they should do is to smarten up by using from turmeric to chocolate, applying cosmetics and spending money for manicure and pedicure in beauty salons.

Most male supervisors seem to doubt the woman's ability to handle jobs that require challenge and hard labor. As a result, they nominate men to report critical issues and hold senior administrative positions.

Mehjabeen, senior reporter of a national daily is working for seven years. She recalls her early days in journalism, when the chief reporter gave her only women and children issues to cover. But she argued with him sensibly and gradually made him realize that women can also cover other issues, like politics, business or sports.

She stressed the importance of women's participation in the decision-making process in the media and the need to develop training programmes that will enhance women's professional skills.

She suggests changing editorial policy to increase gender sensitivity and it is needed to help women themselves to develop their professional visions and attain their rights.

The lack of opportunities for professional growth is one of the major depressants that Bangladeshi women face in media. There is so little access for women in decision making and that women are working at lower levels. Unfortunately our media lacks a strong existence of women as chiefs of broadcast and print media bureau. Shaju Hossein of Ittefaq Group, Mahbuba Chowdhury of Manab Jamin, Kaneez Almas of Canvas, Tasmima Hossein of Ananya, Nasrin Chowdhury of Dia Asiana are few women chief of our print media.

It is a good sign that some people raise their voices against demeaning women's moral in such advertisement. Nowadays women are involved in the communications sector. But we still need women at the decision-making level and governing bodies that influence media policy. We need to increase gender sensitivity in the media to eradicate the gender-based stereotyping.

The Government should make strategies to increase women's participation in decision-making at all levels of the media. Women should be empowered by improving their knowledge and access to information technology. Governments need to take action by supporting women's education, training and employment to promote women's equal access to all areas of the media.

Recently a number of gender workshops are organized by different NGO's and women organizations. NGO's and women-right organization have to promote extensive campaigns, making use of public and private educational programmes and increase awareness of the human rights of women.

Women need to understand what they can do when there is discrimination. We have to try our best to put an end to the negative effects of advertising on women. The media literacy, collaboration with existing media watch groups, media-related advocacies within and with governments and non-government organizations could improve the ongoing scenario of media.