Portrayal of Men and Women in Indian Television Advertising
Abstract
Although gender role portrayals in advertising have been extensively studied in Western and other Asian countries, very few such analyses have been done in India. The study does a systematic analysis of the role portrayal of men and women in Indian television advertising. 128 male role portrayals and 196 female role portrayals are content analyzed for the years 1996, 1999 and 2002. Results show that Indian advertising depicts men and women in traditionally assigned roles of the culture. In several respects, role portrayals in Indian advertising are different from the West but similar to other Asian countries.
Role Portrayals of Men and Women in Indian
Television Advertising
The advertising industry in India is estimated to be Rs 11,000 crore (¡§Advertising: Back in Business¡¨ Businessworld, August 23, 2004) and growing at a robust pace every year. The expenditure in advertising is used to promote a wide range of products ranging from automobiles to washing machines to personal care products. Although the primary function of advertising is to inform consumers about product attributes and benefits, advertising also functions as a vehicle of socio-cultural communication (Courtney and Whipple 1983). Advertisements link the functional benefits of a product to emotional and social benefits thus creating cultural meaning in the course of communication (Aaker, Batra and Myers 1992). The potential of advertising to reflect cultural roles and norms has been recognized by marketing professionals, who have described advertising metaphorically as a ¡¥mirror¡¦ of social values (Holbrook 1987; Pollay and Gallagher 1990) or the ¡¥looking glass of masses' (Lantos 1987). Researchers who have analyzed gender portrayals in advertising have found that a society¡¦s gender roles and cultural norms are manifested in its advertisements (e.g. Wolin 2003).
Gender Role Portrayals in Western advertising
Early studies on gender role portrayals in US print advertising documented the presence of a number of stereotypes in the way women and men were depicted in advertising (e.g. Belkaoui and Belkaoui 1976; Courtney and Lockeretz 1971; Sexton and Haberman 1974; Venkatesan and Losco 1975). Studies found that women were found primarily at home or in domestic settings. Women were under represented in working situations and were shown in a narrow range of occupations typically in secretarial, clerical, or blue-collar positions. A large majority of advertisements showed women as preoccupied with physical attractiveness and as sex objects. Men, on the other hand, were shown in a range of occupational roles in settings away from home such as work or outdoors.
The Home Depot is a supplier of home goods and appliances such as refrigerators, grills, and paint. The store often uses visual advertisements to attract customers. In these ads there are portrayals of both men and women, which help to illustrate the gender scripts that are prevalent within society. To analyze these illustrations and come to conclusions in terms of stereotypical gender scripts in commercials, a visual sociology research project was completed.
They want to show a “sparkling version” of the product and that implicates that, “if you buy the one, you are on the way to realizing the other” (26). So the portrayal of gender is essential in advertisement when it is trying to catch the viewer’s attention, since gender norms can be considered as a form of silent language in the society. Simply put, it can be said that gender roles are “a language which needs no complex translation by the viewer, just transmission through the image” (Capener 3) and therefore it is important for the advertiser to utilize the imagined gender roles within the advertisement
Advertising, whether criticized or celebrated, is undeniably a strong force in American society. Portrayals and Images of women have long been used to sell in published advertisements. However, how they have been used has changed enormously throughout the decades. Women have fought to find a lasting and prominent position in their society. Only in the span of twenty years, between 1900’s and 1920’s, the roles of women changed dramatically here in United States.
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
Frith, Katherine T., and Barbara Mueller. "Advertisements Stereotype Women and Girls." Opposing Viewpoints. N.p., 2006. Web. 25 Nov. 2013. .
Is advertising manipulative; can it be controlling, or is it fueling the demand of the American economy? The exhaustive battle of what advertising is and what it’s not is never-ending and both ends of the spectrum can only battle with statistics, words, and opinions on the fact of the matter. Many arguments have arisen since the establishment of the advertising industry and everyone sheds their own light on the subject. In “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising,” Jean Kilbourne argues that the advertising industry portrayal of women is narrow-minded and produces emotional and psychological problems within women in regards with their roles in society, their physical appearance, and sexual attitudes. She also emphasizes how the world of advertising creates artificiality among women. On another note, the author of “What Advertisement Isn’t,” John O’Toole, takes a look at how the government has too much control of and poorly regulates advertising, how it is not deceptive on a subconscious level, and how advertising is a sales tool and should not be evaluated by journalistic or any other standards. These two arguments talk about issues in advertising that interconnect on broader levels but essentially are speaking of two different levels of advertisements.
Gender roles in advertising don’t just affect men they also affect young women. Women in
The question of gender discrimination and stereotyping still remains the actual one in the 21 century. The concept of “gender” as “social basis” assumes studying of the gender stereotypes ordering one line of role behavior in a family and society for men, and others for women. Certainly, gender stereotypes really exist, and they are various in the different countries and during different historical eras. Despite the extensive data of researches, discrimination is widely used in the sphere of mass media, which uses gender stereotypes to attract attention from the necessary auditory or satisfy their own purposes. There are diverse situations where gender discrimination may be expressed through advertisements: the most typical are job advertisements and commercials. As stereotypical representations together with strongly marked discriminative elements are widely represented in advertisements, it is essential to determine the
In Gender Advertisements, Goffman analysed the ways in which popular media constructs masculinity and femininity through looking at more than 500 advertisements. Goffman’s studies showed a clear contrast in the ways in which both men and women are presented to society. Generally, women held lower gazes whilst men looked straight on; men were strong in their grip whilst women were lighter and more delicate; women were more melodramatic whilst men were stoic and controlled etc. Overall, Goffman argued that the relationship between men and women was presented as a parent-child relationship – men are powerful whilst women represent subordination (Goffman,
Advertising has become a means of gender socialization because it is a way for people to learn the “gender map” that lays out the expectations for men and women based on their sex.
In the essay “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” author and philosopher Susan Bordo discusses the history and current state of male representation in advertisements. While using her feminist background, Bordo compares and contrasts the aspects of how men and women are portrayed in the public eye. She claims that there has been a paradigm shift the media with the theory that not just women are being objectified in the public eye, but also men too. Since the mid-1970s, with the introduction of Calvin Klein commercials, men have started to become more dehumanized and regarded as sex symbols. In a similar fashion to how Bordo describes gender, race plays a similar role in the media. People of all different ethnicities and cultures are being categorized into an oversimplified and usually unfair image by the media over basic characteristics.
Advertising surrounds the world every second of the day. This form of influence has had the power to influence how society views gender roles ever since men and women began to appear in advertisements. Through the exposure to many different gender portrayals in advertising, gender roles become developed by society. This stems from how men and women are depicted, which forms stereotypes regarding the individual roles of men and women. People often shift their definition of an ideal image towards what they see in advertisements. From this, they tend to make comparisons between themselves and the advertisement models. Advertisements tend to be brief, but impactful. The different portrayals of men and women in advertising show that advertisements
To sum up, it is often said that advertising is shaping women gender identity, and some have been argued that the statement is true, because of the higher amount of sexual references of women that advertisement show and the damages that occur on women’s personality and the public negative opinions of those women. As well, the negative effects that those kinds of advertisements cause to young generations and make them feel like they should simulate such things and are proud of what they are doing because famous actors are posting their pictures that way. Others deem this case as a personal freedom and absolutely unrelated to shaping women gender identity. On the contrast, they believe that, those sorts of advertisements are seriously teaching women how to stay healthy and be attractive, so they might have self-satisfaction after all.
Curry and Clarke’s article believe in a strategy called “visual literacy” which develops women and men’s roles in advertisements (1983: 365). Advertisements are considered a part of mass media and communications, which influence an audience and impact society as a whole. Audiences quickly begin to rely on messages sent through advertisements and can create ideologies of women and men. These messages not only are extremely persuasive, but they additionally are effective in product consumption in the media (Curry and Clarke 1983:
Lundstrom, William J., and Donald Sciglimpaglia. "Sex Role Portrayals in Advertising."Journal of Marketing 41.3 (1977): 72