Gender Rewrite – Reject Stereotypes.
Celebrate real women.

The challenge

Though there are a few women-centric films being made, Bollywood blockbusters and chart-toppers continue glorifying stalking as love, sexual harassment as jest, and giving secondary roles to women.
Similar is the story with advertisements. A 2021 study by the Advertisements Standards Council of India (ASCI) notes that there has been a positive shift in the depiction of women. But though the women are shown as more confident, career-oriented, they continue to bear the burden of domestic work and familial responsibilities.

These are just a few instances of problematic portrayal of women in the media, having a great impact on our thinking and behaviour. The challenge then is to change this narrative on screen, if we are to change the mindsets and attitudes of those around us.

The competition

We conducted a Gender Rewrite competition to encourage youth, the largest consumers of media, to reimagine what their favourite songs, ad and movies could look like. The rules were simple: they had to rewrite sexist and stereotypical Hindi film dialogues, songs and ads to make them more  progressive and gender sensitive.

We received highly creative entries from across India, of which our judges found 29 to be outstanding.