Gender Roles in Advertising
Little Sally, 6, and Billy, 8, are sitting down in front of the family television for an afternoon of enjoyable programming. Suddenly an advertisement interrupts their favorite show. The advertisement features a young woman cleaning a kitchen with a product that seems to be easy and enjoyable to use. The woman is smiling through this chore as she turns to the camera and comments on how fast the product helped her to clean her kitchen. Sally and Billy patiently wait for their show to reappear and pay little attention to the advertisement. This is an average scene in any given home in America and yet this seemingly small fragment of time does have a sociological impact. Many women and men live their lives without the awareness that advertising has had a socializing impact on them. Children and adolescents spend an average of 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television (APA statistics). Advertising pops up approximately 3 to 5 times an hour or more (this was just my observation). So, within these 22 to 28 hours per week, children see a conservative average of 60 to 140 advertisements. Advertising places genders into given roles and help to perpetuate gender stereotypes. A social theory that
Third, the woman is smiling through this chore indicating that cleaning is an intrinsic reward for the woman. Consider a study result printed in the text Thinking About Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender 5th Edition by Margaret Anderson in which 6th and 8th graders' views on gender were compared to the amount of time spent watching television (Morgan, 1987). And finally, the product is easy to use and therefore frees up more of the woman's time for other domestic activities. " The percentage of men featured in advertising for domestic products is low and when these ads do feature men, the men are often seen as unknowledgeable and unnatural. Women are placed in situation where they are seen as less important than men, as belonging in the home and as being overly preoccupied with their appearances. Parents can hake a difference by limiting the amount of television their children watch and lobbying to the advertising industry for advertisements that are neutral and provide a variety of gender roles for children. Another stereotype present in advertising is the "wimp" but this stereotype only serves to further impress the desire to be masculine and aggressive upon males. For example, little Sally may observe that feminine behavior is rewarded in an advertisement and conclude that for a reward, it is beneficial for her to behave in the same manner as illustrated in the advertisement. In the above-mentioned article, a study by Goffman, 1979, concluded that men in domestic situations were "often presented as ludicrous and childlike. Also another study within the Anderson text performed by Signorielli, 1989,1991 is summed in the following: ". The views that children have about gender roles is clearly influenced by the amount of time a child spends glued to the television and therefore the amount of gender stereotypical advertisements.
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