Introduction
This promotional campaign aims at achieving gender equality among students in China where there is no gender equality. The focus is therefore to promote the women empowerment so that women in china can attain a better position of Chinese economy. The present situation in Chinese rural population indicates that the gender inequality has been a major problem and as a result, there is no full utilization of human capital. As such, the given promotional campaign targets to achieving a higher retention rate of girls in schools. This can only be possible by marketing in the social way and aimed at the parents of kids in order to float the key message that the ratio of girls should be at least equivalent to that of boys in Chinese schools (Cheng, Kotler & Lee, 2011).
The conducted research indicates that girls are far better than boys are in cultural terms. This gears towards the gender inequality in subject. Parents to the schoolchildren, mostly ranging from 25 to 40 years of age, live under poverty line. Politically, it is unfair because the government should boost the economy, which currently shows the parents are very poor and cannot afford the required technology to get the campaign message. Technologically, research shows that there is only one television or telephone in every town.
The ratio of boys to girls is unequal because girls rarely go to school since the traditional culture makes them believe that women stay at the farms in rural china. The poor economy facilitates to dropout cases where 7 out of ten students drop out and remain in farms. The trends are alarming and there should be equal opportunities for both boys and girls from their parents.
Parents have several strengths like the ability to survive in the poor environment and still afford to take their children to school. This is a plus for them since the children receiving education will one day be there for them and improve their lives. They however have weaknesses like the inability to give equal attention and privileges to both boys and girls. This weakness swallows the rest since it is very common in Chinese schools. Parents should have objectives like working together and joining campaign groups for gender inequality eradication having in mind that they do face threats. The main threat is lack of technology like television through which they can get vital information concerning the campaign.
In the campaign process of increasing the ratio of girls to boys in Chinese schools, communication would be appropriate through media selection so that the target audience can receive the message. Women are the main target audience and through them, eradication of gender inequality process becomes more efficient. Apart from this, there is need for utilization of the key theories used in the design of informing message. These theories include social cognitive, exchange, stages of change, pre contemplation and implementation theories respectively.
Design of Promotional Campaign
The call for an effectual design aimed at increasing school retention rates within Chinese rural schools. The campaign is essential for the purposes of conveying the message to the target audience. The main aim in this promotional campaign is promote the inclusion of female students in rural Chinese schools. There is need to set measurable objectives and development of strategies to ensure that the target audience who are the parents in this segment take both girls and boys to school. The position and target of the campaign is talking on the benefits that would come to the entire society. These benefits only depend on the action taken by the parents like making sure that their daughters go to school alongside boys and at the same time.
The most appropriate campaign approach is social marketing, which is primarily concerned with ensuring the welfare of the entire society through promotion of merit possessions. The social marketing is an appropriate way of promoting gender equality in schools through parent’s help because it is mainly concerned with the application of marketing tools, concepts and resources. As a result, the underserved population in the community can be encouraged to adopt societal accepted behavior that would ultimately benefit the entire society. Social marketing targets those that have the reason to care and are ready for change as well, and the target audience in the given campaign is the parents, they also have good reason to care for their children. (Hinders, 2008)
Social marketing would help in creating a sense of feelings among the parents that their decision to send their daughters to school would benefit not only their children, but also the entire society and bring in a new culture. This is contrary to the traditional one when a parent would have more than ten children and maybe advocate for one parent one child policy. It will empower them to take initiatives that would result into the development of entire society. Social marketing is also appropriate in the rural areas for promotion of activities that result into higher levels of benefit to the whole society. The subordinate gender equality ratios at schools in rural China are adversely affecting the lives of female children.
Tools and techniques of social marketing can get full utilization in the promotion of such inequality. Adverse impact of such lower ratio over the societal development can only be with the help of one child policy where there should only be one child per family or two incase both parents have a child in the time of marriage. In rural china, each registered household should have only two children.
Social marketing is highly beneficial in seeking an increase in the acceptability of a social idea or cause in a target group and since, the development of female children in the society is a social cause, it could get effective promotion through social marketing tools and techniques among the parents of such suffered children. Therefore, the defined target audience should be school kids’ parents with the design slogan being Promotion of Gender Equality and Women Empowerment in Rural China (Dogra, 2007).
Theories of Change Design:
Social cognitive change theory is an important change management theory, which indicates that a person changes his/her behavior because of self-efficacy, goals and outcome expectations. The higher level of confidence among the people allows them the ability to change even if they face several obstacles. As a result, the social cognitive change theory is an important message design with respect to the given campaign to instill a higher level of confidence among parents that the participation of their daughter in the schools would be highly beneficial (Bales and Ritchie, 2009).
In addition to this, the stages of change theory have five major stages of which the pre-contemplation stage is the first stage. In this stage, people start thinking about the decision to make change in their behavior prior to six months of actually implementing the change. This theory can also be supportive in reducing the gender inequality Chinese rural schools, as parents can be encouraged to think about the future of their children through promotional campaigns performed through a range of media. The best communication channel so far is the posters because the campaign timeframe is long term. In the pre-contemplation stage, people are unaware of the need for a change and they lack knowledge concerning the negative consequences of their continuing behavior. As a result, in this stage, promotional campaigns aim at increasing the knowledge of parents regarding the need for change in their behavior of restricting their female children from going to school. (Hayden, 2009)
Other change theories include exchange theory which is a sociological and psychological perspective explaining the social changes and stabilization. This is like a negotiated exchange process, which in this case is exchanging the cultures. There is the implementation theory, which is a systematic guidance of operation on building interventions in the best way like helping the girl child go to school. The framework interpretation theory is more of Christian focused and to my understanding, God created every one in his own image and likeness therefore equal. Therefore, both boys and girls should have equal rights to go to school.
Implementation and Review
The implementation of campaign by use of the implementation theory is through the selection of appropriate campaign materials such as television, radio and pamphlets. In so doing, the target audience such as the parents of children can get encouragements to send their female child to schools and ultimately and improve the low boy to girl ratios in schools. It is essential to monitor the impact of the $26.5 million program aimed at financing campaign performed through a focus group interview. After a period of 3 months of the campaign and any increase in the ratio would mean that, the campaign has been effective in inducing parents to send their children at school.
This will find out if the program has any impact on financial support for family with school going children and ensure the 150000 girls that had dropped out of school are back. The program also targets the culture for a general educational program.
Works cited
Bales, C.W. and Ritchie, C.S. Handbook of Clinical Nutrition and Aging, 2nd ed., New York: Springer publishers, 2009.
Cheng, H., Kotler, P. & Lee, N. Social Marketing for Public Health: Global Trends and Success Stories, Bartlett: Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2011,
Dogra. Rural Marketing, seventh ed., Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 2006.
Hayden, J., Introduction to Health Behavior Theory, Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2009.
Rhindress, M., Understanding How to Motivate Communities to Support and Ride Public Transportation: Transportation Research Board New York: New York Times, 2006.
