PADS FOR THE PATRICIANS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE

SANITARY PADS ADVERTISEMENT IN BANGLADESH AND

ITS’ BIGOTRY REPRESENTATION OF POOR WOMEN

Rasheda Rawnak Khan1

Rownok Jahan Akhi2

Abstract
The images and messages of a particular advertisement can influence consumers’
perspectives about a product, even for menstrual products like sanitary napkins,
irrespective of what social class or position they belong to. In the context of
Bangladesh, the number of advertisements produced for sanitary napkins is
small, and in most cases, the advertisements that exist portray content based on a
higher or middle-class lifestyle and affairs, thus creating the ideology that sanitary
pads as a product are only made for higher or middle-class women. This study
empirically analyses the sanitary pad advertisements in Bangladesh with a focus
on the underrepresentation of poor women. It also raises important questions,
including whether the media consciously denies the reality of poor women in the
pad advertisements. Taking nine sanitary pad advertisements into consideration,
the content analysis method has been used to scrutinize these advertisements and
later to determine the significance of connected advertisements. The means of
grandiloquence in terms of the represented casts’ attire, professions, and lifestyles
are identified from the content analyses of the sanitary pad advertisements. The
presence of poor class women’s menstrual affairs in the sanitary pad advertisement
is a necessity to influence their attitude.

Keywords: TV Advertisement, Connectedness, Biasness, Sanitary Pad

Advertisement, Underprivileged Women, Politics of Representation

Introduction
Menstruation is a “natural” and “biological” phenomenon (Hasson, 2020; Poly &
Eyemoon, 2020; Sultana, 2011) that every woman has to face at their reproductive

1 Rasheda Rawnak Khan, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Dhaka,

Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh. Email: [email protected]
2 Rownok Jahan Akhi, Department of English & Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh,
Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh. Email: [email protected]

Social Science Review [The Dhaka University Studies, Part-D], Vol. 40, No.2, December 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3329/ssr.v40i2.72202
128 Rasheda Rawnak Khan and Rownok Jahan Akhi

age, regardless of their social, religious, economic, cultural, and racial differences.
Since a woman menstruates for most of the second half of her life, on average for
about 7 years during her lifetime (UNICEF, 2018), maintaining menstrual health can
be considered a fundamental part of her overall physical and mental health system.
That is why ensuring the use of modern and safer menstrual hygiene products like
sanitary pads, tampons, menstrual cups, etc. is important for ensuring a woman’s
better health, education, and active participation in the workforce. Overall, sanitary
pads can be universally recognized and accepted as a safe and accessible material
for menstrual hygiene management (Mahajan & Kaushal, 2017).

In Bangladesh, menstruation is associated with numerous social, religious, and

cultural stigmas. It is considered something that needs to be concealed (White,
2013). Society and culture shape menstruation in such a way that a woman finds
it inappropriate and shameful to talk about her menstrual health and hygiene with
their fellow women, family, or health service providers (Houppert, 1999; Johnston-
Robledo & Chrisler, 2020; Wood, 2020). Even most of the mothers in Bangladesh
are unwilling or hesitate to share anything about menstruation and menstrual health
with their premenarcheal daughters (Bosch, 2005). Therefore, a large number of
girls, having no access to prior knowledge about menstrual health, face difficulties
and ultimately choose unhygienic or inappropriate menstrual hygiene materials.
As a result, advertising has developed into a platform for discussing personal
issues and is serving as a “social guide” (Merskin, 1999, pp. 955). In this sense, it
is media exposure that is one of the most important indicators of sanitary pad use
among adolescent girls (Hennegan, 2020). For instance, studies (Afiaz & Biswas,
2021; Goli et al., 2020; Sudeshna & Aparajita, 2012) found that girls with access
to mass media prefer sanitary pads as their menstrual hygiene material compared
to girls who do not have any access to it.

How girls and women are encouraged and inspired to use sanitary pads by accessing
media is more or less dependent on the quality of the sanitary pad advertisement.
Additionally, educational institutions, social campaigns, community health clinics,
family members, friends, etc. all serve as stimulating forces to use sanitary pads.
In Bangladesh, sanitary pads were first introduced in the 1990s (Poly & Eyemoon,
2020). Ever since the inauguration, sanitary pad manufacturing companies have
been trying to promote the use of sanitary pads by highlighting the benefits of
using sanitary pads. Looking into the sanitary pad manufacturing market in
Bangladesh, some renowned conglomerates, as well as profitable or non-profitable
organisations like SMC Enterprise Ltd., ACI Limited, Square Toiletries Ltd.,
Bashundhara Paper Mills Ltd., Ella Pad, etc., can be identified. These companies
Pads for the Patricians: An analysis of the sanitary pads advertisement in Bangladesh 129

manufacture sanitary pads under brand names like “Joya Sanitary Napkin,”
“Savlon Freedom Sanitary Napkin,” “Senora,” “Monalisa Sanitary Napkin,” and
“Ella Pad,” respectively. Since the last decade, these sanitary pads have been
widely recognised and accepted by a large number of females in Bangladesh, and
this is made possible through the advertisement industry. These companies adopt
various strategies, mostly advertising, as a means of publicising their products.
They dramatise different contents and affairs related to menstruation and sanitary
pads, sometimes considering celebrity attachment as a marketing strategy while
sometimes highlighting the messages through creativity, relevancy, and emotional
supplements. Nevertheless, these advertisements, for example, always bring out
the menstruation-related affairs of middle and higher-class women (i.e., players,
travellers, models, businesswomen, service holders, and students from a rich
or middle-class background) into the spotlight, while keeping poor women and
their affairs related to menstruation under concealment. Here, rich and middle-
class women represent distinct socio-economic groups with varying access to
resources, education, affordable livelihoods, and societal privileges, whereas poor-
class women refer to individuals belonging to the lower socio-economic strata,
typically experiencing limited access to basic needs and resources. Economic
constraints shape their lifestyles, cultural practices, and social dynamics. However,
even though the main goal of advertising is to sell the product by aiming it at the
target audience, the messages that these advertisements convey can surpass this
objective (Bishop, 2008). Sanitary pads and their publicity through advertisements
are beyond certain categories of audiences, unlike luxurious products that are only
available to certain audiences and customers. This is because ensuring the menstrual
health and hygiene of every woman, everywhere, is not only related to ensuring
a better, healthier life but also to ensuring human rights and a sustainable world.
Hence, because of the marginalization of poor women’s affairs in the sanitary pad
advertisements, they start to believe that a sanitary pad is something not made for
them since they failed to find any relevance within the casts shown on the screen.
Now it is a necessity to look at how the sanitary pad advertisements in Bangladesh
fail to represent the underprivileged or poor women’s menstrual affairs, along with
the effects of this marginalisation on their sanitary pad buying behaviour.

This study, therefore, taking this gap into account, intends to analyse the
biased representation of sanitary pad advertisements in Bangladesh in terms of
demonstrating content associated with poor-class women. Hence, this study attempts
to ask a research question—‘Do sanitary pad advertisements in Bangladesh target
and represent middle- and upper-class women and show a kind of negligence while
130 Rasheda Rawnak Khan and Rownok Jahan Akhi

representing poor class women’s affairs?’ To meet the objectives of the study, a
detailed background with the threefold aspects of this study is provided, which
justifies the necessity to have a more cognizant look at the represented ideas,
messages, and lastly, discourses of the sanitary pad advertisements. The paper
is structured as follows: at first, a brief introduction is given to familiarise the
readers with the topic, and then a thorough background is provided to highlight
the problem and gap of the study. Next, the method and materials of the study are
clarified following the results as well as the analysis of the findings. The last part
succinctly states the conclusion of the study and unfolds the limitations and future
scope of the research.

Background
Advertisement as an Influential Force
Advertisements, as a “social and cultural phenomenon, are a great source of ideas
for and about the world we inhabit” (Soar, 2000, pp. 419). Twitchell (1996, pp. 4,
as cited in Bishop, 2008) observes the influence of advertisement on our culture,
our society, and ourselves, saying, “What is carried in with advertising is what we
know, what we share, and what we believe in. It is who we are.” However, with an
overall 34% of a product’s cost attributed to the advertisement (Sama, 2019), the
main goal of an advertisement is to sell their products by grabbing the attention of
their targeted audiences through the formation of messages and ideas. The better
the formation and delivery of the advertisement of the product, the better the
audiences could be driven towards the product. Nevertheless, Williamson (1978,
as cited in Merskin, 1999) posits the very concept of advertisement by saying
modern advertising not only “teaches us to consume the product” but also “its
sign” (pp. 943). Therefore, the messages that are conveyed in an advertisement
work as thought-provoking and either positively or negatively affect the human
psyche. An effective advertisement is one that uses a “form of communication” to
appeal to consumers’ desires to improve their quality of life (Gilbert et al., 2021,
pp.2). When asked by Matthew Soar (2021) what makes an advertisement a great
advertisement, the findings reveal that a great advertisement “has nothing to do with
sales. It has to do with what the work is like and how it feels” (p. 429). Likewise,
advertisement raises an emotional feeling in the audiences and enhances their
satisfaction level towards those products, which later on positively evokes their
buying behaviour (Ansari & Jolouldar, 2001; Bishnoi, 2009; Saleem & Abideen,
2011). Besides, in South Asian and developing countries like Bangladesh, where
most of the population resides in remote areas, the influence of TV advertisements
Pads for the Patricians: An analysis of the sanitary pads advertisement in Bangladesh 131

is comparatively higher than in the rest of the world (Hassan, 2015). People in
those areas, having few and sometimes no access to informative sources and at
the same time shackled with cultural and social stigmas, lacked the motivation to
lead a healthy and practical life. Therefore, the well-authorized and desegregated
contents of the television programs, as well as the advertisements, are of great aid.
Sanitary Pad Advertisements
Advertisements for menstrual products like sanitary pads have always been a hub
of information sources for menstruating girls and women worldwide. However,
as mentioned earlier, sanitary pad advertisements, at present, openly illustrate
menstrual-related practices and hygiene information to audiences (Poly &
Eyemoon, 2020). This act or deliberation of the menstrual hygiene information
directly aids the girls and women who fail to find this information elsewhere or,
in some sense, helps to elucidate the menstrual-related stigmas weeded into our
societies and cultures. In spite of influencing a large number of menstruated girls
and women worldwide, sanitary pad advertisements have idealised numerous
menstruation-related taboos and stigmas by emphasising menstruation as a
hygiene issue and a matter of secrecy. The influences of advertisements on forming
menstrual taboos and stigmas have been documented by various researchers from
all over the world for the last two to three decades (for instance, Campbell et al.,
2021; Chabih et al., 2022; Coutts and Berg, 1993; Delaney et al., 1987; Houppert,
1999; Kane, 1990; Mandziuk, 2010; Merskin, 1999; Park, 1996; Sultana, 2011).
Nevertheless, in Bangladesh, the number of studies that are developed under
the concern of menstrual health and hygiene and the impact of advertisements
influencing women to buy sanitary pads or menstrual hygiene products are very
few, if at all. Sultana (2011) emphasises the politics of representation regarding
the false images associated with menstruation and the use of sanitary pads in the
advertisement. She posits that there are false ideologies created and recreated
through television advertisements and also explains that these advertisements
are considered marketing strategies and, therefore, create a misguided or false
discourse about menstruation and female health and hygiene. Most recently,
this misrepresentation of sanitary pad advertisements has been brought under
consideration and rectification; nonetheless, the portrayal of false or absent images
or creating biased discourses is still contested.
The Missing Face and its Effect on Poor Class Women
Monetary or higher socioeconomic values have always served and are serving as
a crucial factor for defining and treating people, and that’s the reason why the
132 Rasheda Rawnak Khan and Rownok Jahan Akhi

appearance of the poor, either in the media or in advertisements, is very rare (Bishop,
2008). Even a few concerns have been raised about how poor and underprivileged
people are represented in media and television advertisements. Scholars like Bishop
(2008) and Sotirovic (2002) attempted to explore and emphasise their concerns
about how the poor and their faces are represented in television advertisements.
Whatever the reasons are, the studies have found a lack of attention or an attitude
of negligence towards the poor while highlighting their affairs and needs in the
media and advertisements. The poor, their voices, and their interests are always
an afterthought, even in a country like Bangladesh, where the labour class mostly
runs the wheel of the economy. For example, the garment industry in Bangladesh
is the second-largest sector in the world, employing almost four million workers
(ILO, 2014), of whom 80% are women (World Bank, 2017). And in terms of
media access, a survey conducted by the “Asian Center for Development” found
that almost 40% of garment workers use the internet regularly and have logged
in to apps like Facebook, IMO, YouTube, etc. (Haque & Bari, 2021). In addition,
TV advertisements have a greater impact on rural youths than on urban youths
(Bishnoi & Sharma, 2009). Nonetheless, even if TV advertisements impact the
lives of these people, they are not treated and presented equally by the national and
international media.

Generally, while arguing over the lack of affordability to buy sanitary pads, Hasan
(2019) posits that the use of sanitary pads is not wholly hindered by the “price issue”
but rather by the “mindset” of the consumers (p. 86). Creative advertisements and,
most importantly, connected or relative messages in sanitary pad advertisements
can change the sanitary pad buying behaviour of poor-class consumers, whereas
the absence of their faces, i.e., their menstrual experiences, in advertisements
can negatively affect their view of the product and, at a maximum, their buying
behaviour. On the other hand, when asked by Mudey et al. (2010), the girls shared
their willingness to pay for sanitary pads if the government or non-governmental
organizations made these products cheaper and more affordable. More proactively,
the scenario in Bangladesh is quite praiseworthy, as it is trying to ensure the use of
sanitary pads and, therefore, menstrual health by making sanitary pads affordable
for all in terms of price. The government of Bangladesh has already excluded VAT
and supplementary duty on imported raw materials required for manufacturing
companies, resulting in an almost 40% fall in the price of sanitary pads (Serao,
2019). Additionally, the advertisements at present are promoting the cost-
effectiveness of sanitary pads, but the contents they are showing to the audiences
are a subject of dichotomy.
Pads for the Patricians: An analysis of the sanitary pads advertisement in Bangladesh 133

Methods & Materials

In order to critically examine the predisposition of sanitary pad advertisements in
terms of class representation, the content analysis method is embedded. Merskin
(1999) refers to the prerequisite of considering advertisements as fabricators of
dominant ideology as looking at and critically examining the entire ad in terms of
its overall design, including the context (the setting of the ad), the written texts,
and the visual elements. Therefore, the content analysis method has been adopted
to scrutinise the advertisements and find out whose interests are presented in them
and how they are biased toward poor women. Previous studies such as Erchull et
al. (2002), Merskin (1999), and Poly & Eyemoon (2020) used the content analysis
method to evaluate sanitary pad advertisements, yet their research either focused
on the analysis of misrepresented images about menstruation or objectification of
women. The advertisements of the sanitary pads have been selected arbitrarily, yet
the researchers look into some rudiments like the length of the advertisements,
which should be under one and a half minutes; the advertisements necessarily must
be produced in Bangladesh; they should be broadcasted in the last 7 years, from
2017 to 2023; and finally, the advertisements should be uploaded or available on
YouTube or the sanitary pad manufacturers’ Facebook pages for future access and
for the readers’ benefits. Most of all, to avoid bias while selecting the sample, the
researchers choose the advertisements randomly, i.e., without watching or analysing
them at first, so that there remains no incertitude that only the advertisements with
higher-class women’s affairs are chosen, neglecting the advertisements (if there are
any) with poor class women’s affairs. For the content analysis, the data were coded
manually and divided into different categories. The variables or categories coded
for each of the advertisements, along with their definitions, are given in Table 1.
Also, a list of the selected advertisements that match the respective categories is
added to the table. Several in-depth readings of the scripts of the ads were done by
the researchers during a three-and-a-half-week period, along with close viewings
of each and every visual detail (settings, the casts’ dressing sense, their interests,
etc.).
134 Rasheda Rawnak Khan and Rownok Jahan Akhi

Table 1: Details of the variables used in the study for content analysis

Categories Definitions Explanation of the coded Corresponding

categories advertisement
i. Female characters Joya Sanitary
are categorized as Napkin, Senora
upper- or middle-class Confidence,
Occupations What are the if their represented and Freedom
represented professions include that Sanitary Napkin
occupations of a higher service holder, advertisements.
of the female doctor, teacher, model,
characters athlete, or university
who are student.
casted in the ii. If the represented Monalisa
advertisements occupations of the female Sanitary Napkin
characters fall under advertisement.
garment worker, small
business holder woman,
housewife, or school-going
students from the rural side,
they are coded as poor class.
i. If the represented Joya Sanitary
Which places places fall under urban Napkin, Senora

Settings are represented infrastructures like Confidence,

in the restaurants, gymnasiums, and Freedom
advertisements multi-floored houses, or Sanitary Napkin
offices, then they are coded advertisements.
as urban settings.
ii. These are designated Monalisa
as rural settings if the Sanitary Napkin
described locations have advertisement.
rural infrastructure,
such as village schools
or dilapidated or badly
maintained homes.
Pads for the Patricians: An analysis of the sanitary pads advertisement in Bangladesh 135

i. High lifestyles are defined Senora

Lifestyles What sort as those that are centered on Confidence, Joya
of lifestyles metropolitan environments and Freedom
are portrayed and are opulent. Sanitary Napkin
in the advertisements.
advertisements ii. Poor lifestyles are Monalisa
coded as those that are and Freedom
centered primarily on rural Sanitary Napkin
locations. advertisements.
Source: Authors’ own construct

Results and Analysis

The sanitary pad advertisements portray matters associated with the affairs of
rich or middle-class women, considering them their targeted consumers and thus
creating an ideology about the class-based consumption of sanitary pads. The
selected sanitary pad advertisements (N = 9) were content analysed in order to
determine their settings, castings’ occupations, lifestyles, and affairs.

In terms of the professions featured in the selected advertisements, the majority

of the advertisements (almost 95%) fall under the category of portraying upper-
middle-class women, followed by 95% of portrayed settings as urban places and
90% of represented lifestyles as high or lavish lifestyles. Joya Sanitary Napkin
advertisement, for instance, casts a model as a higher-level female employee who
recently got promoted and is giving a dinner treat to her colleagues in a high-
quality restaurant. But, while paying the bill, she was unwelcomed by one of her
male colleagues, according to whom paying bills is not a woman’s task but rather
a man’s task. She defended him by saying that “if it’s a woman’s celebration,
she is the one who could afford to pay the bill.” By saying so, the woman in the
advertisement challenges the present economic position of women and welcomes
a more independent and insurrectionist form of woman. Thus, this advertisement
sheds light on a very common social and cultural belief in Bangladesh while also
sharing its’ tagline of not believing those stigmas either, including that wearing a
sanitary pad may create discomfort. While emphasising the connection between
having stable financial access and knowledge about the “anti-bacterial” and “super-
absorbing” features of Joya sanitary pads, as outlined above, nonetheless, this
advertisement is actually creating a stigma or false discourse instead of eliminating
it. It shows that a woman with success in the job field who pays her own bill
could only afford to buy Joya sanitary pads. i.e., having enhanced financial access
136 Rasheda Rawnak Khan and Rownok Jahan Akhi

is a necessity to buy a sanitary napkin. The Senora Confidence sanitary napkin

advertisement implies the necessity of the girls’ being confident in order to defend
all the taboos and fears related to menstruation and menstrual experiences. This
advertisement knuckles down to eradicate those fallacies by stating a new canon:
“seeing and showing menstruation as a normal phenomenon.” With different stories
of different women, including a girl’s confidence in talking about sanitary pads
publicly, a man’s confidence in offering sanitary pads to his soon-to-be wife and
starting a new life journey, a player’s confidence in playing during her menstrual
days, and a girl’s confidence in buying sanitary pads from a pharmacy that a male
seller runs, the advertisement of the senora confidence sanitary napkin aspires to
see that confidence among those girls. Girls’ and women’s having confidence in
order to break societal and cultural taboos should be considered the new normal.

Furthermore, the advertisement of the Monalisa Sanitary Napkin, like the Senora
Confidence sanitary napkin, brings forward some of the common criticisms a girl
or woman has to face on a daily basis and is recognized as a hindrance to her
way of success and freedom. It successfully featured different girls and women,
represented as a student, a higher-ranking service holder, and a cricketer. A society
desires the traditional form of a woman over a girl riding a bicycle, doing work
outside instead of taking care of the family, and a woman who chooses to be a
cricket player. If a woman chooses to do something that is beyond her traditional
definition of gender performativity, she is then criticized and defamed by society,
and this real picture is documented in this ad. The characters in this advertisement,
due to their avoidance of traditional behavioural traits of womanhood, respectively
criticize with tags like “why a girl rides a bicycle,” “who is going to take care of her
family,” and “playing cricket is not a woman’s thing to do.” Nevertheless, together,
these two advertisements, Senora Confidence and Monalisa Sanitary Napkin,
question the very concept of gender performativity and encourage women to break
those stigmas and criticisms with hard work and being indifferent towards them, but
they lack the diverse representation of women from all walks of life and how they
too face societal criticism and defamation. The urban settings and well-appointed
lifestyles of the featured casts shown in the advertisements all indicate a means of
grandiloquence that someone has to possess in order to afford these sanitary pads.

Freedom sanitary napkin manufacturing company produced a couple of

advertisements highlighting the same theme in different situations through different
characters. In the first advertisement, an unmarried woman faces the awkward
situation of being asked by a woman, “When will she get married?” and the girl
answers by saying, “You tell me when.” In the next advertisement, in a function, a
Pads for the Patricians: An analysis of the sanitary pads advertisement in Bangladesh 137

woman faces the same kind of embarrassment when a lady asks her “when she will
get a baby,” and again, like in the first advertisement, the woman too defends herself
by saying, “You tell me when.” Lastly, in another advertisement, a girl is asked by
a woman why she has become so thin, and she soothes her discomfort by pointing
out, “I have become fit instead, and you should try it too.” These advertisements
for Freedom Sanitary Pads posit a woman defending all the awkward situations
courageously, like the way she could defend an awkward situation like menstruation
with Freedom sanitary napkins. In this sense, these advertisements create a false
discourse by showcasing menstruation as an awkward phenomenon in women’s
lives rather than naturalising it. The use of the word “awkward” or “irritating” in
order to signify menstruation makes the audience view menstruation as a problem.
Additionally, these advertisements fabricate a kind of belief among the audiences
that they should use something crooked in order to get rid of something crooked.
The last advertisement, for example, normalises body shaming as the girl defends
the lady by stating that she is unfit because she doesn’t look as thin as the girl does.
By casting a chubby woman and later mocking her physicality, this ad emphasises
the inferiority of a chubby woman and welcomes body shaming.

Relevant to this discussion, another similar theme with different contexts and
characters was adopted by Freedom Sanitary Pad Manufacturing Company to
produce three advertisements. These advertisements support women’s progression
and emancipation. For example, in these advertisements, a girl is represented as a
delivery agent, a mother is represented as an entrepreneur, and a girl is represented
as courageous as she attempts to do skydiving. All of these works are challenging,
and more importantly, they are not welcomed by society for a woman to do. While
the reasons behind this forbiddance are many, women’s biological phenomena,
specifically menstruation, are considered an influential factor. To add to this, the
propaganda that these three advertisements follow is: “Don’t let menstruation
come in between your success,” and by publicising this motto, Freedom Sanitary
Pad advertisements, in one place, inspire women to fight for their freedom, yet on
the long term, it portrays menstruation as a problem or as an obstacle from which
one should get rid of.

Overall, then, the continuous representation of the same type of cast holding
the same professions like doctors, players, models, higher service holders, etc.,
and the emphasis on the higher-class or urban settings, along with the luxurious
lifestyles of the portrayed characters, framed a conscious denial of poor-class
women’s affairs in the advertisements. Connectedness, as stated by Gilbert et al.
(2021), is related to finding similarities with the models or the people cast in an
138 Rasheda Rawnak Khan and Rownok Jahan Akhi

ad. It is the audiences’ connectedness with an advertisement that “incorporates the

perspectives” of them so that they can easily identify with the messages instead
of getting halted by them (Ang et al., 2014, p. 216). More generally, connected
information in advertisements has been demonstrated to enhance the recall of
consumers more than less connected information (Ang et al., 2007), but the content
analysis of the advertisements shows there is little or no connection between the
underprivileged group of women and the scenes portrayed there. Many theorists
have shown how the politics of power, knowledge, and inequality are involved in
the construction of such advertisements. Hall (2001) suggests not decoding visual
images as simple reflections or the state of reality as there are hidden politics of
representation. Foucault (1979) adopted the term ‘discourse’ to denote a social
system that produces power and knowledge, which ultimately defines the ordering
of objects. Power and knowledge are mutually inseparable, as Foucault argues
that “there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of
knowledge, nor any knowledge which does not presuppose and constitutes at the
same time power relations.” (1979, p. 27). Generalising, poor women’s neglected
position and identity formation lies at the central level within the politics of
class representation. Also, by targeting only a particular group of women as their
audiences and buyers, the sanitary pad manufacturing companies are creating
a societal and cultural discourse that does not include the needs of financially
underprivileged women, constructing sanitary pads as a luxurious product not
applicable to the use of all women from all walks of life.

Conclusion
The presence of life affairs, mostly the menstrual-related crisis, and the contents of
the poor socioeconomic group of women need to be portrayed on the screen, not only
to drive their attraction to buy sanitary pads but also to make a world sustainable
and equivalent for all walks of life. Being a ‘marketing concept’, advertisement
is really associated with the buying behaviour of the consumers; nonetheless, this
simple process is not simple either, as Hassan (2015) argues that there are multiple
factors that affect the consumers’ purchasing behaviour (pp. 608). Among the
multiple factors that influence a consumer’s purchasing behaviour, relativity or
connectedness with the advertising’s contents is one of the most crucial factors,
and as discussed above, this influence works predominantly in the lives of poor
socioeconomic groups of women. An impactful sanitary pad advertisement, as
identified in this study, is one that deliberately portrays the messages with an equal
representation of women from all walks of life and from all socio-demographic
sectors. The sanitary pad advertisements broadcasted on Bangladeshi television,
Pads for the Patricians: An analysis of the sanitary pads advertisement in Bangladesh 139

YouTube channels, and Facebook pages fail to deliver content that is connected
with poor women and their menstrual affairs, creating little or no impression on the
buying behaviour of the underprivileged yet most needed consumers.

Limitations and Future Scopes of Research

A major challenge while conducting research on visual discourse is that visual data
holds diverse inter-textual meanings, for which the researchers, most of the time,
fail to draw proper or complete conclusions about what has been examined and
discussed by them. As the messages conveyed through the advertisements for the
sanitary pad differ from culture to culture and may vary from person to person, the
content analysis of the study, as admitted by the authors of this research, cannot
be considered wholly justified. Rose (2016, as cited in Campbell et al., 2021)
states that the researchers, while considering the visual dataset, can never claim
the completeness of their analysis, yet they must come to an argument. Moreover,
the advertisements that were chosen for the content analysis are basically retrieved
from the online archives, resulting in a kind of limitation to the dataset since the
authors fail to record and analyse advertisements from diverse fields.

On the other hand, this study, with its findings, can influence the researchers to
carry out their studies in interdisciplinary fields like advertising, marketing,
public health, media, etc. It will open a new way of exploring and examining the
advertisements produced worldwide. In-depth research, for instance, focusing
mainly on the psychological aspects, can be carried out to examine the effects
of advertisements’ bias on the poor class consumer’s buying behaviour of any
products that are not meant to be portrayed as luxurious.

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Afiaz, A., & Biswas, R. K. (2021). Awareness on menstrual hygiene management in Bangladesh and
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