Description

Laws, Justice and Rights for Women in the Modern Era
Editor: Prof. Dr. Yogesh Kumar Gupta, Ishan Ahmad and Premananda Murmu
Published by Universal Academic Books Publishers and Distributors,
New Delhi (India)
ISBN: 978-81-686113-5-1, 2026

Chapter 26

Power, Postfeminism, and the Politics of Women’s Empowerment in Contemporary Indian Advertising

Monamie Mukherjee
Assistant Professor, Department of English and Literary Studies, Brainware University, Barasat, West Bengal, India.
ORCID ID: 0009-0001-8836-4751

Abstract

Power is a multifaceted construct encompassing control over resources, decision-making, influence, and the capacity to shape dominant norms and values. Examined through a feminist political economy lens, power asymmetries reveal how certain groups benefit at the expense of others by exploiting social, economic, and symbolic inequalities (Fuchs, 2017). Gendered power relations in particular enable patriarchal structures to appropriate women’s labour, bodies, and affective capacities while systematically excluding them from authority and recognition.

Media and advertising are central sites where these power relations are reproduced and negotiated. In Indian context advertising has increasingly adopted the language of empowerment, equality and social responsibility, where empowerment means individual choice, confidence, and self-management for women. Campaigns such as Britannia’s Marie Gold advertisement featuring Avani Lekhara, the Paralympic gold medallist in rifle shooting, Ariel’s #Share the Load, Whisper’s menstrual empowerment narratives, Tata Tea’s Jaago Re, Urban Company’s Chhoti Soch, and many more exemplify feminism that simultaneously contests feminist ideals. This paper discusses on feminists’ criticisms of women empowerment ads, thus critically examining how advertising campaigns are rendering women visible as moral agents and opinion-makers, arguing that genuine empowerment requires a structural reconfiguration of power rather than representational inclusion alone.

Keywords

Women’s Empowerment, Indian Advertising, Patriarchal Structures, Media Culture, Feminism.

1. INTRODUCTION

Advertisement, often shortened to ‘Advert’ or ‘Ad’, is communication through various mass media with an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea. Thus, it is a mass marketing tool but different from others, as it is paid for by those who send them. In Latin, ’advertere ’means “to turn towards”; the objectives are to attract interest, engagement and sales, to inform or educate, also influence the public, for mainly commercial purposes. Traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio and then brochures and leaflets, direct mail along with the new media such as search results, blogs, social media, websites or text messages, YouTube videos, are used for the objectives mentioned from centuries now. Also, we find advertisements sometimes inside bills, through product packaging, event bulletins, advertorials, etc. as well as through other mediums as roadside billboards and hoardings, sporting arenas, on the body of a car, bus, train, on subway car walls, police kiosks, parks and gardens, and where not, even on trees, or inside washrooms of public transports.