Ariel has been creating meaningful advertisements for many years. Recently, the company has started focusing on empowering women or promoting gender equality. Just a few months ago, an advertisement of Ariel India with the caption “How Strong is your home team?” went viral on social media. The advertisement is basically in Hindi language but one can easily understand it with English subtitles. The advertisement shows that a girl is sitting in her office and is immensely busy. She is not only talking on her cellphone but also managing her professional work at the same time. On her cell phone, that girl is giving instructions regarding home chores such as: “turn off the water heater”, “Pia’s night suit is on the third shelf”, and “the green night suit”. She is also giving instructions to her office staff. In the meanwhile, her boss arrives and she puts her phone down but forgets to turn it off. The boss, who is also a woman, addresses that girl by the name “Aish” and congratulates her for going to Singapore for the training. The girl named Aish (her actual name is Aisha in the advertisement) thanks her boss and tells her that she just received the email but she might not be able to make it. The boss feels surprised and asks Aisha the reason for not taking the trip as it was a huge opportunity both for Aisha and her employees.
During the conversation, the viewers can see that Aisha’s cell phone is placed on the cabin wall between both of the women. At first, Aisha is not able to answer her boss but when her boss insists, Aisha states that the trip will take her an entire week. She glances at her phone and then claims “I don’t know if the team will be able to manage”. Her boss understands Aisha’s glance and moves near the phone. She then asserts “Even you learnt all this work, right? Your ‘team’ will learn too!” As the phone is still on, Aisha’s husband hears the entire conversation between two women. Aisha is then called into a meeting but her husband falls into a deep thought. When Aisha returns home with groceries, she calls her husband’s name and finds him in the washroom where he is busy putting clothes into the washing machine. Feeling surprised, she asks her husband what is he doing and he tells her that he is training for her Singapore trip. He then gets up, walks towards Aisha and says “Even you learnt all this work, right? Your ‘team’ will learn too”. The advertisement ends with Aisha training her husband to do the laundry.
The interesting aspect of this advertisement is that it goes against most of the elements of the popular feminism. According to Sarah Banet-Weiser, popular feminism is the form of feminism that compels women to solve problems that they experience as individuals. The Ariel’s ad depicts a working woman who is not able to go on a business trip because she also has the burden of domestic chores. This is not an individual issue but a collective issue experienced by majority of the working women in eastern society. In the countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, men are considered the patriarchs of the family so they only earn money. It is not in their nature to help out at home. However, this advertisement by Ariel India is promoting feminist movement #ShareTheLoad so that gender equality can be maintained even in domestic chores. Another point of popular feminism is that usually the idea of empowerment is linked to the act of consumerism. However, in this ad, a deep message is conveyed in order to bring the social transformation. This ad is not about empowering women by purchasing a bag of Ariel but it gives a thought-provoking message to its viewers.