{"id":136,"date":"2008-01-21T10:21:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T10:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2008\/01\/subtle-images-of-disempowerment.html"},"modified":"2011-06-30T20:13:26","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T20:13:26","slug":"subtle-images-of-disempowerment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2008\/01\/subtle-images-of-disempowerment.html","title":{"rendered":"Subtle images of disempowerment"},"content":{"rendered":"

NDTV has been advertising the advent of it\u2019s new channel NDTV Imagine, which starts Jan 21st. One of the advertisements is for the soap \u201cRadha ki betyaan kuch kar dikhayengi\u201d. From the web \u201cRadha Ki Betiyaan is the story of a proud mother who instils the right values in her daughters and believes in their potential for excellence in whatever they choose to do\u201d. Shailaja Kejriwal, the channel\u2019s executive vice-president says of it \u201c”Radha Ki Betiyaan Kuch Kar Dikhayenge is about a mom, Supriya Pilgoankar, whose daughters aim to do something more with their lives than simply find suitable bridegrooms.\u201d Sounds lovely. Nice and empowering. However the ad. doesn\u2019t reflect the \u201cempowerment\u201d part. <\/p>\n

In the ad., we see Radha and her three daughters, Radha in a whitish sari, not much make-up and a bindi. They stand together, and behind them appears a city, presumably where they live. That\u2019s Image 1 that registers. OK, so Radha \u2013 probably single\/widowed, yes ? Bringing up three daughters. Daughters, as seen in the ad. \u2013 smart, nice women (they smile a lot). Then image 2 : We see all of them, coming up, one by one, and putting money into a piggy-bank. <\/p>\n

Note, that these are women, grown-up women (except maybe the youngest kid), saving money, by putting it into a piggy-bank. How do you view a piggy-bank ? How much money can you be putting into a piggy-bank ? When you do need money from that piggy-bank, how much will you have in it ? Hundreds of rupees ? Less ?<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t yet seen a man on television save money by putting paise into a piggy-bank. OK, not unless he\u2019s like two. Why not ? Because this implies :<\/p>\n

1. You don\u2019t have much money (piggy-bank good enough for a few coins, yes ?)
2. You don\u2019t have enough to use a real bank (like SBI, Citi etc.).
3. You are either homely, or a loser
4. You have constrained circumstances
5. You aren\u2019t fighting your battles out with the big dogs.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take the gist of that : no money, not enough, homely, constrained circumstances, not fighting it out in the real world, and associate all that with women. It\u2019s pretty negative, except for the \u201chomely\u201d part. Being \u201chomely\u201d has come to have negative connotations, because a homely women, is portrayed as relinquishing her right to independence, with her only usefulness being in the kitchen\/home etc. <\/p>\n

I think this, that women save what little they have by putting it into home-grown piggy-banks, in an age of technology, email and real, convenient-to-use banking, is a subtle image of disempowerment. It\u2019s subtle, because the idea of what women can and cannot do, has been ingrained into us. And even though we talk of empowerment, still in our minds, we maintain that distinction. We would pooh-pooh a grown money saving his money into a piggy-bank, but to show a woman doing that is OK, because \u201cwomen\u2019s work is inconsequential\u201d. <\/p>\n

The idea that women can earn little, have little, is a strong image of disempowerment. The idea, that a woman prefers to put in her few coins into a home-grown piggy-bank, instead of walking upto a teller, or an ATM, fits right into that \u201chomely\u201d, not smart enough mindset. The idea that Radha, who\u2019s empowering her daughters, is still stuck in a woman\u2019s \u201chomely\u201d mould, saving up her pennies, because she can do no better, is a sop to patriarchal society, and takes away from the premise of the soap.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NDTV has been advertising the advent of it\u2019s new channel NDTV Imagine, which starts Jan 21st. One of the advertisements is for the soap \u201cRadha ki betyaan kuch kar dikhayengi\u201d. From the web \u201cRadha Ki Betiyaan is the story of a proud mother who instils the right values in her daughters and believes in their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,35,10,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-society","category-dumb-things-people-say-and-do","category-india","category-women"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":2,"uagb_excerpt":"NDTV has been advertising the advent of it\u2019s new channel NDTV Imagine, which starts Jan 21st. One of the advertisements is for the soap \u201cRadha ki betyaan kuch kar dikhayengi\u201d. From the web \u201cRadha Ki Betiyaan is the story of a proud mother who instils the right values in her daughters and believes in their…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}