Kanika Datta: Women as a Cause

The Gregorian calendar, which most of the world follows today, rather dampened the enthusiasms of PR-CSR industry complex that rises to a crescendo before each March 8. In case you've been on Mars this last week, March 8 is International Women's Day and this year it fell on a Sunday when readership and viewership tend to fall.

Women's Day swam into urban India's ken only recently, and at least a decade after the discovery of Valentine's Day, a celebration that has become unwarrantedly popular in the Sangh Parivar's eyes. If Valentine's Day endured, despite the Sangh Parivar's best and most thuggish efforts to stamp out its notion of a vulgar western cultural import, it's only because in India commerce always triumphs over even the most fundamentalist ideology.
 

Had the greeting card, gifting, floriculture and hospitality (or GGFH) industries not simultaneously spotted a rich commercial opportunity in the business of romance in Indian society - just as they have done with karva chauth and rakhi - the Parivar's prehistoric outlook may well have prevailed. Throw in Mothers' Day, Fathers' Day, Friendship Day and sundry other Days that Americans think up in their infinite creativity and these four businesses have a great thing going almost all year round.

But Women's Day. That's another story altogether. Even though it, too, is a western cultural import, the Parivar does not have a valid reason to oppose it without appearing even more archaic that liberals give it credit for. There's not much income for the GGFH industry here either, mainly because no one's quite sure what Women's Day is all about. Some observe it as a celebration of women and their achievements in a generic way (though no one has thought to ask why, in that case, we don't celebrate men and their achievements with Men's Day). But mostly, it's a grim reminder of how little not just India but the world has progressed towards in terms of gender equality, so it's not entirely a celebratory occasion.

Most companies opt for the first interpretation because it ties in neatly with their commercial instincts. So every year, consumer goods makers offer special products - pink mobile phones being one example - or price-offs on clothes, shoes, jewellery and, most of all, cookware and household gadgetry (the irony of this straitjacketing of the woman's role has clearly eluded most). It is uncertain whether any of this translates into substantial sales, especially now, when e-commerce shopping sites compete so frantically that everyday is a discount day for some reason or the other.

But there's another commercial aspect to Women's Day that has been acquiring critical mass in recent years. As it turns out, it has become a terrific opportunity for corporate image-building. One of the many wondrous paradoxes in India is that we have abysmal gender equality statistics and corporate India's own record isn't terrific either, but Women and Women's Empowerment have emerged as usefully worthy Causes to champion. After December 16, 2011, the popularity of this Cause rose exponentially.

So these days, every company worth its corporate social responsibility agenda invests in something to do with Women's Empowerment - education, health, jobs, and so on. Women's Empowerment has almost overtaken Rural "Upliftment" in the popularity stakes. If the two can be combined, then a company's CSR programme can be said to have attained the right level of karma.

Let's be clear. Given the deep-seated levels of discrimination against women in India, this trend can only be considered a good thing. In many cases, such investments have truly made a difference to the lives of the beneficiaries. But working towards gender empowerment as a CSR agenda is one thing. Tom-tomming this work fortissimo to the world is quite another. In the opaque business of perception, it somehow inexplicably detracts from the sincerity of the effort and reduces women's empowerment to an exercise in tokenism.

Reinforcing this notion is the media, which routinely plans special events around March 8, perhaps in the hope of attracting some incremental advertising revenues in these parlous times. And the PR companies and their corporate clients rise to the occasion with alacrity, energetically working the phones and dashing off emails to journalists. They want "coverage", they tell us, of their (a) Women's Empowerment/Upliftment programmes and how fabulously successful they are; (b) strategies they follow to ensure gender equality in the workplace (like targeting 25 per cent of top jobs for women as Sikka says he plans to do) and/or (c) profiles their Women Leaders/Achievers Women, in other words, become a Special Purpose Vehicle for corporate image-building like never before.

This Women's Day, the actress Kalki Koechlin thoughtfully suggested doing away with Women's Day not least because it indicates the long distance we have to travel to achieve meaningful gender equality. Watching the frantic PR build-up to the event, I would say copy that.