From my results I deducted that 92.5% of adverts are stereotypical to women, and that women are unlikely to be portrayed as a non-stereotypical character, (e.g. business woman). They are mostly shown as sexual objects. Women are more than 4 times less likely to record a voice over than men, (82.2% are male). This is because women are seen as being not as ‘professional’ as men, or not as qualified to talk about things, therefore, if a man tells you about a product, people are more likely to believe the advert. When women do appear in a non-stereotypical role, they are often advertising products aimed at women, or products for the elderly.
My graphs on the following three pages clearly illustrate these trends, and prove that the majority of advertisements are stereotypical, and use women as a sex object to sell their product. This is commonplace in advertisements, cars have scantily clad women draped across them, yoghurt products have the image of the perfect, yet semi-naked woman bathing in their product, and toothpaste commercials have women walking around in their underwear. The older woman is frequently shown as a housewife or mother, but although older, is still this unattainable vision of beauty which, apparently, we must all strive towards.
These adverts feed on people’s insecurities, and scream to the consumer, ‘If you buy this product you will look like this, you will have this lifestyle, and you can be her!’ The saddest thing is that these adverts successfully sell the lie to the customer, and make millions of pounds each year. From my research I found that 48.8% of ads portray women as sex objects, 29.5% are portrayed as housewives and 14.8% are mothers. Non-stereotypical images make up only 7.9% of advertisements containing women. A sorry state indeed!
From a sociological point of view, I believe that this is because women are portrayed as housewives + mothers in all areas of live, when they are young, they are given cooking toys, and dolls to prepare them for motherhood, and it is expected that this is what they will be when they are older. The image of the career woman is more widely accepted now, but if she decides to keep her job after she has had children, she is frowned upon, ‘A mother’s place is in the home’ seems to be the ideal most people conform to. Men are encouraged to play sports, be active, have a more exciting life, and go to work.
Adverts sole purpose is to sell, and by using these images they appeal to people’s insecurities, they play on the fact that humans constantly find fault in ourselves, and make us thing that if we buy this product we will no longer be too fat, thin, tall or short, but the image of the perfect woman, and have the perfect life. Advertising agencies use this primary socialisation, which our families programme us with at an early age, (that all women eventually want from life is to have a family and raise children), to make us think we need their product. ‘If you buy this baby product you are a good mother’ or ‘If you go to this place, you will look as good as this model’. I believe I have proved my theory, and I will now analyse a similar study by another sociologist, to compare it to my results. I found an investigation, quite similar to mine on the Internet.
The study is comparing sex-role stereotyping in television commercials, done on five continents, and over 25 years. It includes statistical data which I will compare to mine in order to discover if my results are similar to those of Furnham, who wrote the investigation I found. I chose to compare his results from America, as, I decided that it has the most similar culture, society, social norms and expectations to the UK than other countries he uses in his essay, such as India or China. He also found that males are more frequently depicted in ‘professional’ roles, e.g. interviewer/narrator, and women are much more likely to have ‘dependant’ roles, (90% of narrators or voice overs were male in 1988), meaning that without the aid of the man in the advertisement, the woman would be useless.
As I have previously explained, this is because men are seen as being smarter than women, and so if a man tells you to buy the product, he is more likely to persuade people to buy the product than a woman is. This correlates with my results, and I will continue to look for further comparisons between our investigations. In a later study in the UK, 70% of voice overs were male, and in Australia (1992), only 14% of advertisements had female voice overs. It seems that the opinion males are more professional is a world wide opinion. As I also found, most females are young, and of all ages are used in advertisements. The only exception to this rule, is that women who are elderly were used to advertise products aimed at the 65+ age group. Women are much more likely to appear in a commercial advertising body products, or domestic products.
Men are used to sell more cars, holidays etc, serious products. I suggest that this is because women are thought to be capable of deciding whether or not to buy a new hair spray, but, a male has to be involved in any large decisions. Men are also involved in more business type advertisements, e.g. lawyers, loan agencies, banks etc. Furnham’s study also backs this theory, as in the UK (1997), 35.45% of adverts selling body products contain women, compared to 10.5% of men. Once again, Furnham’s findings back up mine, in showing that in the UK (in 1997) 7% of auto/sports products contain men, compared to only 2.1% containing females.
Something which I deducted from looking at my results, is that women are more likely to appear as a sex object, if they are appearing in an advert aimed at younger people. As the demographic group the ad is aimed at ages, so does the image of the woman, from sex object, to housewife, mother and then O.A.P. (Old Age Pensioner). Furnham used a previous study (Neto ; Pinto 1998) to deduct that males are more likely than females to act as the authority of a product, which means males are much more likely to be the main driving force in the advertisement, rather than women.
This is still visible today, in the Flash Wipes commercial where the male is so clever, and the female so stupid that she does not realise he is using Flash to clean the bathroom, and thinks he is working away when he is actually sleeping in the bath. Furnham’s investigation turned out very similar results to mine, sadly, I could not compare this essay to mine any further, as Furnham goes on to analyse several different studies from different countries, and from different time periods, which would be extremely interesting to investigate myself, but I do not have enough time to study them in enough detail.
Evaluation
I believe my investigation has produced reliable results, and proved my theory. Content analysis and using secondary information were the only methods available to me, as facts and previous studies in this area were all I needed. It was not necessary to include surveys, interviews or other contact with the public as opinions were of no use to me. The strength of this, is that my results are accurate and clear, as content analysis is difficult to misinterpret, I simply analysed the information I saw. The downside to this is that I only received one person’s opinion about the advertisements, my own.
A person from a different social background may have had contrasting ideas about what is, or what is not stereotypical to women. I remained unbiased throughout my investigation, but, I would’ve also liked to have a much larger sample of advertisements, from television and a wider range of newspapers + magazines to produce more reliable results, There is no missing information in my study, and seeing as I chose a broad range of TV advertisements ( by recording both daytime and prime time TV), newspaper and magazines, my information is not biased in any way.
