General
Source: All Africa
Have you ever watched this advert currently airing on local TV channels? A visibly drunk and loud man is having a good time in a dingy bar, ordering rounds of beer for his friends and feasting on nyama choma.
The barmaid serving them is seen taking his order and as she turns around the man touches her buttocks. Obviously offended, the barmaid tells off the man who laughs out loud.
In the next scene, the man storms home to a waiting wife who asks him where he has been. He answers in Kiswahili, "Since when did you start asking me what time I come back to my house?" He goes ahead and asks for food and, when he is told there is none, he asks his wife why she did not go to the estate kiosk to get food items on loan.
She reminds him that they have not cleared the previous month's debt and she cannot get any more items on credit from the kiosk.
Fed up with the drama, she says enough is enough and grabs her baby. "I am better off at my parents' home than staying here suffering in your hands," says the wife in Kiswahili.
While this advert communicates that it is ushenzi (foolishness) to treat a barmaid, your wife and children with disregard and disrespect, on the flip side, the ad demeans women.
First of all, it implies that women cannot fend for their families and that they are at the mercy of their husbands to feed them. Isn't it telling that the advert portrays women as helpless when the man indecently assaults the barmaid and supposedly gets away with it as no action is taken against him? As much as the advert suggests that men should treat women - and by extension their families - with respect, I strongly feel the ad gives the impression that women have no financial ability and belong at home.
In contemporary society, women are the sole breadwinners of many families and the advert has completely lost touch with modern life. In this case, if the woman in this 'bad marriage' had a job and thus a salary, then she would not depend on her 'good-for-nothing-husband' to bring home the bacon. No doubt such families still exist but as a medium of communication, adverts should not be used as tools of gender stereotyping.
In another advert, this time on radio, an insurance association persuades those taking loans to get insurance cover to avoid being "caught off-guard". A debt collector throws out a widow desperately begging to be given time to "fix things", while her children are heard crying in the background during the commotion.
This advert, like the first one, is very unsettling. As much as the advertiser would have wanted to create real life scenario to woo potential customers to get insurance cover, they should have taken a minute to ask themselves: Who is our target market? The advert is in bad taste in the sense that it is unbalanced and lacks sensitivity. Did the advertiser have to go to these lengths to send home a message? They missed the point. Adverts should not be sexist or gender-blind neither should they be used as 'silent' perpetrators of gender discrimination.
Women should be seen to take their place in the office and men to take theirs in the home. The lines between 'gender roles' are being blurred by modern realities and it is up to men and women to accept the fact and rise to the challenge. What is wrong with seeing a man serving a meal to his family in a cooking oil advertisement? Why can't we see a man washing clothes for his family?
Times have changed and so have roles and careers. For instance, we have male chefs and hairdressers and women pilots, engineers, architects and mechanics. It is about time adverts gave women a commercial break, quite literary.
Mercy Njoroge, a sub editor with the Star, comments on gender