Heena Sharma Blog

For decades Gillette has been selling razors using the slogan “the best a man can get”. This week the Procter & Gamble-owned brand has adopted “the best a man can be” as part of a marketing campaign meant to challenge toxic masculinity. Explicitly aligning itself with the # metoo movement , the message is that men have to change if we want to end sexual harassment, bullying and domestic violence. The campaign’s centrepiece, a 108-second “short film”, has divided opinion. Among those to declare their contempt for Gillette’s “virtue signalling” is the British television presenter Piers Morgan, who has labelled the advert “man-hating” and part of a “war on masculinity”. On the other side, those lauding Gillette include Glamour magazine contributor Helen Wilson-Beevers, who has praised the video as a “self-assured piece of advertising that Gillette should be proud of”. Read More Business Standard

Actress Tanushree Dutta is rightly regarded as the founding-mother of the " MeToo Movement " in India. When she spoke on her experience of being harassed 10 years ago, she opened up the floodgates for numerous other women from every walk of life to come forward with their stories. But now, Tanushree is done. She is all set to return to the US, and refuses to take credit for starting the " MeToo Movement " in India. "The media is just making a heroine out of an ordinary person's organic journey. I was not the doer but just a conduit and a vessel through which some change or awareness had to come about in society," she said. Not that she is distancing herself completely from the movement. "In a way, I needed retribution too from the incident that pushed me back several years in my professional life." But now it's time for her to return to routine life in the US. Read More Business Standard

In the wake of the # MeToo movement , almost 80 per cent of men have become overly cautious in their interactions with women colleagues, according to a report. The study by market research and analysis company Velocity MR, which had over 2,500 respondents across Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Chennai, noted that eight out of 10 people said that formal workplace interactions have been highly impacted as a result of the movement . It found that close to 80 per cent of the respondents said fear of losing their career, family reputation, social stigma, and scepticism could be some of the reasons for the victims not reporting the cases earlier. Also, around 70 per cent of the respondents agreed that even after reporting the cases, victims still face threats. The study further observed that close to 50 per cent of the respondents disapproved of victims reporting the abuse later, while two in five males supported the victims saying they are right in repo...

A former Tata Group executive has alleged that the salt-to-software conglomerate did not hear her pleas against sexual harassment she faced at the hands of a CEO of a group firm, a charge that the group denied saying it always took "decisive action on evidence of inappropriate conduct." Writing for a leading English daily, Anjuli Pandit, a former executive assistant to ex-MD & CEO of Taj Hotels , Rakesh Sarna, claimed she reached out to Taj board members, Tata Group Executive Council members, the chairman and the senior-most HR official with her complaint against Sarna. "The only resolution they could find was to ask me to resign from Taj, immediately," she wrote, adding she "lost trust in Taj's process" as the company's Internal Complaint Committee, comprised "Sarna, four people within two reporting lines of him and an external member from one of Tata's closest law firms". Responding to queries on the issue, a T...

It was a seemingly harmless tweet that enraged Mahima Kukreja and put the 28-year-old on the frontline of India’s # MeToo firestorm . The advertising professional was on her way to work Oct. 4 when she saw a message from popular comedian Utsav Chakraborty, who has a television show and nearly 50,000 Twitter followers, about a recent incident of Indian men behaving badly on a cruise ship in Australia, which he said was an “ embarrassment ” to fellow citizens. Wasn’t this the same person who’d sent her an unsolicited photograph of a penis two years ago? “I was like, ‘this is a man standing on some moral high ground after harassing me,” Kukreja recalled during an interview at a Mumbai cafe. “At that moment, I wasn’t thinking of consequences. I thought: ‘This is it. I’m just going to come out with my story.” She replied to his tweet with her allegations. Chakraborty issued a public apology within hours, in which he admitted to sending such photographs to several women and ...

Actor Nana Patekar has dismissed as "motivated and malicious" the allegations of sexual harassment levelled against him by actor Tanushree Dutta in his reply to the Cine and TV Artists' Association (CINTAA). Patekar claimed that Dutta had not made any accusations against him in 2008, when the alleged incident took place. Patekar, through his lawyer Aniket Nikam, sent his reply earlier this week after CINTAA issued a notice to him upon a complaint filed by Dutta. Dutta has alleged that Patekar misbehaved with her during the shooting of a song for the film "Horn Ok Pleaseee" in 2008. Also, when she refused to shoot for the song, Patekar and the film's producer summoned goons to the set who threatened her and damaged her car, she alleged. "My client (Patekar) denies in toto (completely) the baseless and unsubstantiated allegations, insinuation levelled by Dutta," the reply said. Patekar has been subjected to mental haras...