The idiot box has been hit by a new political advertisement recently as the Aam Aadmi Party has come out with a new television advertisement to market themselves, in a bid to regain some of its lost credibility. Apart from portraying Arvind Kejriwal as some sort of a superhero, who has solved all of the national capital’s problems and has completed weeded out corruption from the city, the advertisement is incredibly patriarchic and sexist in nature. It shows a woman who is happy that the household electricity bill has reduced since Kejriwal has come to power, and throughout the course of the two minute advertisement, she is being shown as doing every household chore by herself. While she chops vegetables, cooks, drops her child to school and buys groceries, her husband is shown sipping tea, reading the newspaper and sitting on the couch, doing nothing.
For a party which claims to be progressive and representative of the common man’s problems, to portray such a female character is extremely sexist and backward. It is appalling that apart from being so exaggerated in its claims of having rectified Delhi, the female character is shown as being subservient to the male character, who is absolutely taking no initiative in the tasks of the household. What kind of a mindset is this government perpetuating, where the onus of managing a house is solely on the woman, and the man’s job is to just sit and sip tea.
What is comforting in this whole situation, is that the advertisement has been subject to a fair share of criticism due to this regressive portrayal of a woman. This shows that general public is slowly realizing the lack of gender sensitivity around them. If only our political parties were the same! We hope that the men and women of AAP take the criticism seriously and will take action not to let this happen again. In the meantime, they can be assured that we do not sit around, drinking chai, patiently waiting until Arvind Kejriwal miraculously solves gender inequality too.
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