Gender stereotypes in advertising

There is a long history of adverts featuring a sexist or negative representation of women.

We need to learn how adverts represent different people and groups and also how these representations have changed over time. Today, the focus is on the representation of women and the gender stereotypes that appear in many adverts.

Key words

Representation: the way a group or individual is portrayed in the media.

Normalised: when something becomes considered ‘normal’ or ‘usual’

Stereotype: viewing a group or individual in a fixed, over-simplified way.

Conventions: typical features of a media product. 

Reinforce a stereotype: the representation supports our usual expectations.

Subvert a stereotype: the representation goes against our usual expectations.

How are women represented in advertising?

The stereotype of women in advertising is often negative. Representations through the history of advertising have suggested that women are inferior to men, bad drivers, powerless, sexualised or focused on domestic work (e.g. cleaning). This potentially influences media audiences and the views in wider society.

 

 















Oxo TV adverts

Explore how the representations of women have changed through these two adverts for Oxo. Are they really as different as they first appear?

1980s Oxo advert




2017 Oxo advert



Gender representation in advertising: blog task

Create a new blogpost called 'Gender representation in advertising'.

For the following three product types:

• Car
• Perfume / aftershave
• Cleaning product

Find one advert from the 1950s/1960s and one advert from post-2000s for each product type. Save the images to your Media folder as jpegs and then import them into your blog post. Once you have six adverts in your blogpost, answer the following questions:

1) What stereotypes of women can you find in the 1950s and 1960s adverts? Give specific examples. 

2) What stereotypes of women can you find in the post-2000s adverts? Give specific examples.

3) How do your findings suggest representations of gender have changed over the last 50 years? 

Extension: Find three adverts that subvert  gender stereotypes and write a paragraph about how they do this.

You will be given some lesson time to do this but will need to finish for homework - due Thursday 8 March.