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Women Leaders of the advertising and media industry talk about gender politics, glass ceiling and pay gap
Pragati Rana, Sarjita Jain and Rachana Lokhande talk to us about gender politics in the ad, marketing and media industry
We speak to the women leaders of the advertising industry such as Kinetic’s Rachana Lokhande, The Viral Fever’s Sarjita...
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Women Leaders of the advertising and media industry talk about gender politics, glass ceiling and pay gap

We speak to the women leaders of the advertising industry such as Kinetic’s Rachana Lokhande, The Viral Fever’s Sarjita...
  • Some recent women-centric campaigns have challenged the stereotypical portrayal of women and ingrained misogyny of the society. However, we have a long way to go.
  • According to a study by the Credit Suisse Research Institute conducted in 2019, India is near the bottom of the rankings for female representation at senior management levels. And lesser the women in boardrooms, lesser the representation in ads.
  • We speak to the women leaders of the advertising industry such as Kinetic’s Rachana Lokhande, The Viral Fever’s Sarjita Jain and Dentsu Webchutney’s Pragati Rana to understand how we can break this glass ceiling and decrease the pay gap.
For the longest time, women in the advertising world were a minority. They did not make it to the top of the hierarchy and very little has changed in the past few years. Thanks to brands like Puma, women are now getting a little more recognition and equal representation in advertisements.
As per a research conducted by Engendered, none of the top companies have more than 42% female employees. It suggests that Swiggy doesn’t have a single woman in their top management team. ICICI, on the other hand, only has 4%.
Women Leaders of the advertising and media industry talk about gender politics, glass ceiling and pay gap

According to another study by the Credit Suisse Research Institute conducted in 2019, India is near the bottom of the rankings for female representation at senior management levels amongst other countries. It was ranked 23rd on the list. And lesser the women in boardrooms, lesser their representation in ads.

It was only in the late 20’s that brands started portraying women in roles other than domestic buyer and home-maker. From Nirma to Nike, we have come a long way. However, our ads still lack variety. We are still represented as someone’s wife or mother.

To understand this evolution, we spoke to some prominent women leaders from the advertising and media industry such as Rachana Lokhande, Co-CEO, Kinetic India, Sarjita Jain - Channel Head, Girliyapa, The Viral Fever, and Pragati Rana, AVP, Strategy, Dentsu Webchutney.

The women leaders highlighted how power dynamics play a subtle role in the industry, why more women don’t make it to the top, brands that have changed the narrative, and how we can further improve the representation of women in advertisements.