Diary on stereotyped female portrayals in Pakistani ads launched.

Byline: Shazia Hasan

KARACHI -- The old black and white image of a smiling woman balancing a man's shoe on her head makes one wonder about the kind of mindset behind the shoe advertisement. Although other reproduced advertisements in the Uks Resource Centre's Diary 2020 titled Advertising - Women of Pakistan: Time to See and be the Change, which was launched here on Saturday, may not be as shocking, several still show men and women in stereotypical roles.

For example, women are shown promoting cooking oil, serving tea, selling beauty soap, fairness creams and shampoos while the men are depicted selling shaving razors.

But, there are advertisements showing couples riding bicycles, a little girl and a little boy fixing their toy car or skipping rope together, and women breaking free from the clutches of centuries-old stereotypical gender roles by working as taxi drivers or chemists and girls excelling in sports or studies.

'Since feminism is selling these days, we are getting to watch men serving tea for their better halves'

According to the Uks director, since 1998 they have taken care to bring out a diary every year which has a fresh and meaningful theme. This time the 2020 diary is about advertising and how women have been portrayed in Pakistani advertising through the years and what kind of advertisements are printed or broadcast here.

For this, the Uks team combed extensively through archival material from the 1950s onwards to learn about the kind of advertisements produced during those days. A marked difference found between advertisements being produced today and those made decades ago is that modern ads contain far more glamour and artificiality with sexual connotations.

Ad and PR woman and human rights communications expert Seema Jaffer said that women are influenced by ad campaigns but a recent change that she has seen is women raising their voices against what they see and don't like. 'For instance, Pakistani cricketer and [former captain of Pakistan's women cricket team] Sana Mir recently called out [film star] Mahira Khan's hair...