It's like hitting your head on the glass ceiling. Just when you think corporate India has realised that casual sexism and objectifying women in its advertisements simply isn't acceptable, someone comes along to shatter that illusion.
This is what transpired on Thursday when an advertisement by Times Jobs issued an ad depicting a woman who "spent some time with the CEO and got a promotion".While the ad was presumably being clever about using the abbreviation CEO not as chief executive officer but instead as Career Enhancement Officer – a term that the company used to describe itself in the copy – social media users didn't see it that way: the copy seemed to suggest a woman boasting that she'd got ahead by associating with the Chief Executive Officer.
The conversation soon snowballed into a discussion about other instances of sexism by the company and whether it was an error on the part of the ad agency or Times Jobs itself for not thinking through their messaging.
This is not all. The job-hunt portal which offers classifieds of open positions as well as information on companies went one step further and released a nine second video of the same ad.
Yet another ad by the job portal shows a woman claiming that her CEO is the "only person" who wants to give her a raise. These videos have been released as part of a campaign called "India's most loved CEO" through which Times Jobs has been promoting itself as one-stop destination for everything about prospective employers.
While the company is yet to react to the ad or issue a clarification, social media is not reacting kindly to the ad.
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