Gender bias + discrimination the subject of new PC Chandra Jewellers campaign via JWT Kolkata

How often have you heard boys being told ‘Don’t cry like a girl’? How often have you thought men look ‘cool’ in shorts while girls look ‘hot’? Have you ever thought why children always take on the father’s surname? The phrase ‘working-mom’ is popular, but not so with ‘working-dads’? Why are daughters barred from performing the last rites of their parents?

J Walter Thompson, Kolkata are challenging this gender bias and discrimination that has seeped into the cultural fabric in a new campaign for PC Chandra Jewellers.

VIEW THE CAMPAIGN

Daily life in India is strewn with many such small mindless examples of such bias. Simple acts that come naturally, are often sub-consciously guided by the male way of thinking. Even Women’s Day is the same. It’s a 24-hours carnival to make women feel at the top of the world. Social media gets flooded with dollops of praise for women and gender equality. But on the strike of the midnight hour, the world goes back to its normal ways of bias and discrimination.

PC Chandra Jewellers is a brand that stands for the modern empowered women and they went out and spoke to women across Kolkata about bias and discrimination that they face in their day to day lives. J Walter Thompson collected the interviews in an appeal video with a clarion call to #UncelebrateWomensDay.

Talking about the initiative, U.K. Chandra, Managing Director of P.C. Chandra Jewellers said, “We are not against Women’s Day. We are against the idea of celebrating just one day for women. Every day must be women’s day. Without women this world is incomplete.”

Arjun Mukherjee, VP & ECD, J Walter Thompson, Kolkata says, “The challenge was to cut through the clutter of feel-good Women’s Day messages and create something that’s honest and non-gimmicky. In our everyday life, there are instances of unconscious bias, we often ignore. And in doing so we nurture the seed of discrimination. The aim was not to give solutions, but to raise questions. We are sure this will touch a chord with both men and women and make them think.”

“PC Chandra is a brand that women trust. It is a brand that has been celebrating women for decades. So it was only fitting to have a narrative on Women’s Day that was all about being honest about the respect that women deserve through the year and not just on one special day”, said Ayan Chakraborty, VP & Executive Business Director, J Walter Thompson, Kolkata

#UncelebrateWomensDay was released online the week preceding Women’s Day and aims to mobilise women to join the cause. See Facebook.

The campaign was directed by Abhishek Sinha.

Credits