Of Lampshade Women and Marketing

Palo Alto Networks has?apologized ?for using women as literal lamps at a conference. The fact that it happened and noone spoke up at the time is a sign of the systematic objectification of women that we don't even notice. It makes us uncomfortable but hard to fight it as it is in the grey areas of free choice, right to work and cultural acceptance. ?

Booth Babes

In the US IT conferences this is a declining trend but still very common in other industries and parts of the world. The assumption is that pretty women at the booth will attract the audience. Hostesses at most conferences are women too - we had trouble hiring men, though we found a solution provider later. In the 2000s I was at an IT event where our competitor had a lady in a grass skirt and coconut shells as a hostess - thankfully those days are past.? Hopefully the rest of complaining to the organizers helped. ?

Stories are True

A lot of narrative today is commercial - in the form of content that is paid for either by the user, the platform or a company. Consumption of these stories significantly shape our culture. When a trend like?"demure and mindful" ?goes viral, it changes behaviour. Similarly the tradwife trend espoused by the likes of Nara Smith where they make everything from scratch in designer outfits changes some people's value systems and behaviour. And if a lot of media says the same thing, it changes beliefs. When a magazine like Harper's puts Nara Smith on the cover, they are giving the tradwife story a large audience and a certain credibility. When Elon Musk interviews Donald Trump, he lends his credibility and audience to him. When an advertiser greenlights an ad which objectifies women, they endorse that behaviour in real life. I?wrote back in 2016 that ads like the Jack & Jones' ?billboard that looked like it was endorsing harassing your coworker do NOT help humanity. Women are over-represented in Indian ads, just not usually in roles that emphasize autonomy and agency. I want to make it clear that all people in decision making positions need to take responsibility - it isn't a question of "wasn't there a single woman in that decision making group who saw the problem?".

We Can Change the World

I recently received what was allegedly a nude from a fake account on Instagram. I reported the profile and the post to Meta using the tool. I received an automated message stating that they found nothing wrong. I had in parallel submitted a complaint to the local NGO and it was taken down. When we choose to allow malicious content to circulate, we also allow the perpetrators to feel emboldened. When we choose to fight against this and misogynistic messages in content in any form, we make the world a safer place. While it may seem like change is really slow, it is faster than you think. When Infosys was hit with India's first big sexual harassment case in the early 2000s most of corporate India was "what is the problem?". Now every large company has a policy in place, and the Board ensures that cases are investigated. Training programs educate everyone on consent.

The biggest challenge we currently have is to reposition women as people of agency worthy of respect and consent.