ADVERTISING AND GENDER ROLES

Advertising and Gender Roles

Gender Roles in Advertising

Introduction

The world in which we live to today claims to be modern and advanced. But, still there are few ideas and notions that should have jettisoned years back are still prevalent in today's society. One such phenomenon is of gender stereotyping. Stereotyping related to the gender roles can still be observed in this contemporary society around us in more than one ways. The people around us and the people of our society claims that the society has moved ahead and adopted the belief of equality of men and women in our society, outdated ideas about the gender related roles still exists in our society. The field of media is also not exempted from this usage of stereotyping the roles of genders specially the field of advertising. By casting male and female models in congruent with the gender of the product, these serotypes are further reinforced. The aim and objective of this paper is to talk about gender roles in advertising from variegated perspective.

Discussion

It is evident, that gender role stereotypes are reflections of society and resources of model behavior for certain characteristics. Expectations implied by advertising regarding gender role stereotypes can be seen as socialization agents for three reasons. First, advertisements are broadcast publicly, so they influence all members of society. Second, models in the ads convey acceptance of their roles and thus validate those roles. Third, advertisements serve to educate viewers of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and define social expectations through their portrayals of roles and attitudes of both men and women. The evidence suggests that advertisements can influence how one perceives social reality. In this regard, a variety of research shows that it can not only generate stereotypical expectations of gender roles, but also promote gender relations. Thus, the portrayal of gender roles in advertisements influences not only in the replication of behaviors, but also in more complex forms of construction of the subject (Helgeson, 2006).

Research and studies prove repeatedly and convincingly that advertisements have influence on the audience. One of the effects it can have is to foster stereotypes about social topics such as roles of men and women. In U.S., content analysis of advertisements has shown that these advertisements portray very stereotypical roles of men and especially women. The male characters in advertisements are three times more than women. Women are portrayed as weak and malleable characters (Himpe, 2006).

The male characters also play a wide variety of roles, while women are shown as a friend or mother in various advertisements. In advertisements, less than 20% of married women with children are shown working outside the home, although, there is more than 50% in real life (Helgeson, 2006). With the passage of time as the change took place in the gender roles in the real society and real world, the portrayal of gender roles in advertisements also changed but to a smaller extent.

The images of gender role stereotypes in advertising have been criticized since before the 1970s and the ...