Campaign Art: End the Silence

The World Bank
Sangeetha Shanmugham



People, Spaces, Deliberation bloggers present exceptional campaign art from all over the world. These examples are meant to inspire.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Violence against women is a major hurdle to development, and unless its root causes are addressed, many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) will not be met. It’s an issue that stains the futures of millions of women and girls, every day, all over the world.

In a 2005 report, the World Health Organization stated that violence against women is a major threat to social and economic development. It has been linked to poverty, lack of education, gender inequality, child mortality and maternal illness. An unprecedented number of countries have laws against domestic violence, sexual assault and other forms of violence. Challenges remain however in implementing these laws, limiting women and girls’ access to safety and justice. Not enough is done to prevent violence, and when it does occur, it often goes unpunished.

Up to 7 in 10 women report having been physically or sexually abused at some point in their lifetime. Up to 50 per cent of sexual assaults are committed against girls under the age of 16. One in four women experiences physical or sexual violence during pregnancy.

Those are grim numbers and part of the problem is that violence against women is simply not recognized.

So how can we tackle this global issue? One way is by bringing more awareness to it.

Save Our Sisters (SOS) women’s empowerment initiative of the non-profit Save the Children India came up with a stunning campaign called “Abused Goddesses” to highlight domestic violence in India. Ad agency Taproot physically recreated scenes from old hand-painted images of Indian goddesses to symbolize the contradiction that goddesses are revered in religion while women are abused in reality. We’ve heard a lot recently about violence against women in India, sexual violence in particular. In 2013 alone, 244,270 crimes against women were reported in the country. But this campaign was used in expanding the lens of the manner in which we’ve been looking at violence towards women in India.

The campaign used real models to represent bruised and battered revered Hindu goddesses. They were captioned as:

“Pray that we never see this day. Today, more than 68% of women in India are victims of domestic violence. Tomorrow, it seems like no woman shall be spared. Not even the ones we pray to.”

The images are visually beautiful and compelling, making them a powerful tool for drawing attention to their message and driving home the point that gender violence remains a major obstacle in ending poverty and achieving development goals.