Vice Says 60% of Indian Women Use Fairness Products. How Do They Know This?
Vice News in a report that aired on HBO claimed that around 60% of women and 10% of men say they use fairness products.
India has around 500 million women. Women of different classes and castes, in urban and rural areas, employed in the formal or informal sector or as housewives.
Vice’s statistic says that around 300 million Indian women are using fairness products. That’s pretty remarkable. Not least because it implies 60% of women in India have not just the inclination, but also the agency and financial capacity to spend money on skin creams.
I could not find the study that claims this. But here are some places Vice’s statistic may have originated.
- Didier Villanueva, country manager for L’Oreal India, said 60–65% of Indian women use fairness creams daily to a New York Times reporter in 2007. No sources.
Hi quote was also mentioned by Jezebel and cited in another Vice article from 2015.
2. Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) surveyed 1,992 people in Mumbai, India and found that 59.6% of the women had used fairness products at some point in their lifetime. The authors added that “the sample while large, was conveniently obtained with a requirement of literacy and thus, may not be considered representative of the population of Mumbai or India.”
3. A WHO flyer cited a study and said that in India, 61% of the dermatological market consists of skin lightening products. This is of course not the same as 61% of women using these products.
https://www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/mercury_flyer.pdf
If you do know where this number came from, please let me know so that I can return to my TV shows.
