Free Essay Sample on Gender and Advertising

Introduction

Over the past decades, several research projects have been conducted to address the issue of gender-role portrayals in television commercials. Gender advertisements have often been described as the images or pictures in advertising that indicate stereotypical displays and roles. In such cases, stereotypes are beliefs held by the community concerning a specific social category, especially those that differentiate people based on their ender (Grau & Zotos, 2016). The stereotypes are capable of creating massive expectations about a particular social group over another or even restrict opportunities for one gender over the other. On the other end, advertisers make use of these stereotypes to establish the roles of one gender to the other. It is because individuals identify themselves using their respective genders and therefore, making it easy for the advertisers and marketers to use the theme in achieving their goals towards the target audience. The most common components of gender portrayed in adverts relates to physical characteristics such as height, appearance or body size, education, and occupational status. Therefore, the analysis conducted in this paper focusses on exploring how gender is used in television commercials, explicitly noting the roles played by men and women based on the existing stereotypes.

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Gender Roles in Commercials

Gender roles in commercials have been studied since the seventies when commercial radio channels, magazines, televisions, and newspapers started to spread across the world. The stereotyping of gender issues through advertisements impacts and shapes the views of children and the younger populations who are at a critical stage where they get to learn about gender behaviors and attitudes. Today, these media outlets are a natural part of people's lives, and they continue to indicate evidence of gender stereotypes in various ways.

For instance, an analysis of several television commercials in Australia indicate that there are more men in this industry compared to women (Ahlstrand, 2007). As a result, Kantar, data intuition, and consultancy firm researched to sightsee how the public notices the portrayals of men compared to women in the advertising industry. The study, titled ‘AdReaction: Getting Gender Right,' revealed that women appear in 67 percent more television commercials than men (Barr, 2019). The company stated that this is because most advertisement brands tend to target women since they are the primary household purchaser.

Male Dominance

On the other end, television commercials also indicate male dominance in central characters as well as in aural roles such as voiceover (Ahlstrand, 2007). Despite women appearing more than men in adverts, the primary or central roles are most of the time occupied by male figures. While most people believe there is a change in traditional gender roles, the advertisement and media industries seem not to keep up with their expectations on the subject.

Also, today, the majority of respondents believe that a range of behavioral and societal roles are appropriate for both men and women. However, a report by Barr on the Independent magazine (2019) revealed that men are almost 40 percent more likely to feature prominently in adverts than women. For instance, Kantar revealed that, in television commercials that feature women together with men, the latter are 38 percent more likely to occupy the starring role (Barr, 2019).

In addition to their dominance in central roles, men are also often portrayed as masculine characters. For instance, Gillette launched an advertising campaign called ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Get’ in 2019. The advert attracted mixed reviews on the online platforms due to its spread of toxic masculinity about men. The company received massive criticisms for implying that all men are authoritative and have harmful behaviors. In 2006, the ADText unit conducted a study to uncover how masculinity in adverts emphasized specific roles and expectations based on gender.

The unit analyzed 87 commercials found in newsstand Magazine from May to June 2006 and revealed that males (boys and men) were placed in raised positions of manly power and strength compared to females (girls and women) (Timke & O’Barr, 2017). The advertisements depicted as the drivers of actions in specific scenes; for example, the ads portrayed fathers holding the babies around their shoulders while the mothers look on. In 2016, ten years later, the same organization conducted a similar study and concluded that despite witnessing some gender fluidity in television commercials, men are still depicted as superior characters compared to women.

On the other end, women characters are depicted as passive and submissive participants in television commercials. They are often portrayed as dependent on men and always seeking approval from the latter. The female characters are often at home or domestic settings, portraying roles such as wife or housewife, and parent (Timke & O’Barr, 2017). The situation was worse in the past decades when men were the breadwinners of the families, while women were the homemakers and nurturers.

Change in Society

Today, to some extent, society has changed, and men and women have adopted multiple social roles. For example, adverts nowadays depict both men and women as parents, corporate board members, and successful business persons. However, a report by the Marketing Charts (2018) about an analysis of ads in 2016 indicated that close to 50% of women characters are more likely to be shown in the kitchen than men. Also, the majority of women agree that television commercials show outdated gender stereotypes.

It further supports Kantar's claims that modern society may have come a long way in breaking down gender stereotypes, but the advertising industry does not show the progress (Barr, 2019). But, the trends in stereotyping in the advertising and media industry varies all over the world. For instance, traditional societies show more evidence of gender stereotypes compared to European or Western television commercials where the issue is declining.

Today, television commercials portray gender roles based on various factors such as; medium and the time of the day in which the advertisement will appear. For instance, during the day, the majority of people are out working, and the only audience left for television commercials are retired individuals, and women with children (Chisholm, n.d). Therefore, media programming show adverts that portray women in their traditional nurturing roles.

During this period, men are either not shown at all or rarely depicted in the adverts as husbands or even professionals. However, when the television audience is more balanced, the adverts portray women in positions of authority and away from the home settings. Research by Kantar revealed that these advertisements featuring women in authoritative positions have a 72% possibility of being believable (Barr, 2019). The percentage represents 16% more compared to television commercials that show men as authoritative figures.

Women have obtained a strong position in society, but the marketing and advertising industry are yet to embrace the transformation. Instead, the industry still objectifies women sexually and continues to portray them as bodies for the use and pleasure of other people (Timke & O’Barr, 2017). Advertising brands achieve this through various ways such as extreme nudity, body language, and stereotypical activities by women. Most marketing companies deploy this strategy under the notion that “sex sells.” The sexual advertisement can attract people’s attention even if the images share little or no relevance to the advertised products. Also, the brands use shocking images of women’s bodies to stimulate consumers to stop and pay attention long enough for television commercials to persuade them.

The strategy can also make the brand to be more memorable in people’s minds. However, in doing so, the technique tends to normalize the notion of women objectification, which demeans their statuses and promotes sexual harassment and violence towards them. On the other end, similar images and poses from male counterparts often draw less attention and are considered to be weird, funny, and unusual.

On behalf of the early years of a child’s life, television commercials tend to showcase various roles of boys and girls. The primary focus is on portraying the stereotypes based on color, such as blue for boys and pink for girls. The use of color schemes tends to create a division between people, and it is more of a strategy to identify, classify, and separate males from females.

Conclusion

In some advertisements, the colors are used to know the gender of an unborn or newly born child. In doing so, it indicates the significance of identifying the gender of the babies, which in turn, results in the reinforcement of particular expectations on the children based on whether they are male or females. In some adverts, marketing brands use other neutral colors such as purple to incorporate other genders, including lesbians, transgender, gay, and queer (Timke & O’Barr, 2017). Therefore, television commercials use the color to portray that babies are living in a society that is flexible in terms of gender.

References

Ahlstrand, M. (2007). Gender stereotyping in television advertisements: A case of Austrian state television. C-UPPSATS, 236, 1-23.
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1018680/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Barr, S. (2019, January 29). Men are 38% more likely than women to be featured prominently in adverts, study finds. Independent. Accessed July 30, 2020, from
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/men-women-adverts-gender-equality-advertising-gillette-we-believe-stereotypes-a8750786.html

Chisholm, S. (n.d). Gender and advertising: How gender shapes meaning. 89-111.
https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-assets/57153_book_item_57153.pdf

Consumers: Gender roles have changed. Advertising hasn’t. (2018, March 6). Marketing Charts. Accessed on July 30, 2020, from
https://www.marketingcharts.com/advertising-trends/creative-and-formats-82594