Hey Prega News, Stop Telling Her #SheCanCarryBoth

We Indians getting hurt by advertisements is not new but has only grown exponentially in recent times. Controversies regarding Manyavar’s advertisement questioning ‘Kanyadaan’, Sabhyasachi’s Mangalsutra, and Tanishq’s Karwa Chauth advertisement showing a lesbian couple engaging in festivities of an otherwise closed festival defined by patriarchal gendered binary grabbed headlines last year.

Let’s leave the debate over all these advertisements aside for some other day. A new advertisement by Prega News on the occasion of Women’s Day featuring #SheCanCarryBoth has been “appreciated” widely on social media and elsewhere when it should have been called out for following a trajectory more or less similar to how patriarchy does.

The Prega News advertisement shows a senior district law and order officer who carries on with both a mother and public servant. The officer gives a “befitting” reply to a woman who tries to simultaneously outline the difficulties of being a mother and professional.

The question that arises here is, do we need to give women a message of emancipation by glorifying motherhood instead of womanhood, even on International Women’s Day?

Before delving more into how this advertisement is problematic, it is crucial to understand that glorification of any perspective is often a plank employed by an oppressor to justify the oppression. Furthermore, the glorification imparts an impression upon the victim of engaging in higher service and ultimately appropriate the victim’s agency.

It also kills their inherent zeal to rise against oppression and co-opt them within a larger narrative. To substantiate this, let us rewind to 1600-1700 years into ancient India when the supremacy of Vedic religion (Hinduism) was challenged by the rise of multiple sects such as Buddhism and Jainism.

These sects negated the Brahminic superiority, varna system and family life as enshrined in dharma-shastras. So brahmans started compiling Puranas, Smritis and Epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata) to maintain their supremacy, which depicted gods engaged in family life and following a life of principles. Hence, people must do so as well.

And it worked. After a stagnation of 400-500 years, Vedic Religion saw a resurgence and eventually co-opted Buddhism and Jainism within a more prominent fold.

Patriarchy functions in a similar manner. It doesn’t just resist women’s fight but also attempts to appropriate it ruthlessly wherever possible. Unfortunately, Prega News advertisement is doing the same – appropriating her struggle- in four significant ways.

First, one of the major complaints of women has been the societal tendency to restrict them within a few traditional societal roles, especially mother, sister and wife. It should be for women only to choose and pick up their roles- within or outside the traditional realm.

On Women’s Day, glorifying the same traditional roles does not help the women’s movement. After all, we have got a separate Mother’s Day to celebrate her motherhood. Let’s celebrate this women’s day to celebrate her for being a woman more than anything else.

Second, the advertisement talks of #SheCanCarryBoth, which dilutes a woman’s long-standing contribution because she has been carrying both and many more (in inconceivable ways) ‘single-handedly’ for ages, and that was/is not the right course.

The indifference of fathers towards natal care is a historical phenomenon. Beyond this, she has been carrying on responsibilities of households, husbands and elders in the family. Is it that easy to erode the fact that around 70-80% of farm labourers in India are women (Oxfam India, 2013)? A woman must be the last person told how much she can carry.

Third, the advertisement tries to convey how wonderful motherhood is, indeed it must be, but at the same time, it hides the fact that motherhood and pregnancy is not an “all-happy” story.

Especially in low-income countries such as India, where good pregnancy healthcare is unaffordable for larger masses and a big concern. Beyond this, situated in a patriarchal setup, pregnancy does halt professional growth, curtails freedom, and hurts women’s financial autonomy.

Fourth, the advertisement remains silent on the roles a father should play in raising children. Instead, it depicts how “happy” a hospital housekeeper is who works for ten long hours at the hospital and gives the rest of her hours to kids without mentioning the need for crèches at the workplace or the father’s responsibilities.

The advertisement could have done well had it called out the difficulties (which are so many) posed by masculine work culture. The advertisement could have also tried to destroy the patriarchy’s lie of the millennium that “a woman is the largest enemy of other women” by putting up a united front of women and their sisterhood.

This write-up is not a commentary against motherhood, but it points to the need to choose a role for herself. Even while choosing motherhood, she must have the agency to choose when and how many.

The advertisement may buttress the patriarchal agenda of keeping women within pre-decided gendered roles and help market-driven societies earn plenty of profits by selling “pregnancy care.” But it doesn’t by any means helps to #BreakTheBias (theme of #IWD22) associated with women and their identity.