TV Advertisement: Threat or Treat

Last week’s post is about gender stereotyping but what exactly is gender stereotyping? According to Eagly (cited in Crespi 2006), gender stereotypes are related to cognitive processes in which female and male behaviors are differently expected. Traditional gender roles help to sustain gender stereotypes, such as men are supposed to know how to repair things whereas women should clean and cook well.

The question is that the disadvantages of gender role bias are widely known but why is gender stereotyping still continuously strengthened within a society? At least two contemporary social theories can help unravel the reasons. First, Alice Eagly’ s social role theory (cited in Chiao, Bowman & Gill 2008) suggests that social order is partly a result of gender stereotyping. Once a person knows their roles and acts accordingly, they become accepted by the society and will be rewarded. Parents, not wanting children to be cast out, view gender stereotyping positively.

Another theory to explain gender stereotyping in society is called “Social Role Valorization (SRV)” by Dr.Wolf Wolfensberger (cited in Osburn 2006). The basic principle of SRV is that if a person holds valued social roles, that person tends to be socially successful. In other words, if parents can help their children acquire skills needed to participate positively in the community, it is more likely that the children will be well-blended into the community.

While children’s books are influential, television is undeniably more powerful in the area of persuasion. A survey by the American Association of Advertising Agencies in 1999 (cited in Ganahl, Prinsen, & Netzley 2003) revealed that youth aged 8-18 years spent 22 hours and 52 minutes watching television per week. That means they are exposed to at least 16 minutes per hour of advertisements. Pollay (cited in Ganahl, Prinsen, & Netzley 2003) concluded that these commercials reinforce and nurture cultural norms  through images and sounds repeatedly shown on the screen. Like hypnotism, mainstream gender roles are cultivated into the youths’ unconsciousness. Barner (cited in Ganahl, Prinsen, & Netzley 2003) noted that one important lesson children learn from T.V. is how to fit into society.

            In fact, the underlying reason of advertising is obviously not to teach or to help people behave appropriately. Advertising exploits gender stereotypes to boost their sales. Beauty product advertisements act as caring advisors helping women with wrinkles, pimples, or weight problems. When examined deeply, female characters in those advertisements look so unconfident or embarrassed that they have no choice but to grab skin care products from the shelves. Likewise, other household product advertisements such as frozen food, seasoning sauces, and detergent hint that a decent house-wife should be able to cook deliciously, to clean impeccably, and to make her husband happy after work. Such burden as family detergence is placed on delicate hands of women. Incapable of doing those things, they might be neglected. Those advertisements’ primary goal is driving people to purchase products, some of which are unnecessary, if they want to master their roles.

            At the same time, high expectation is placed on men to provide leadership and sufficient money. They are represented as wealthy, dominant, significant, and decision-making in automobile and technology gadget advertisements. Their occupations in the ads are significantly different from their female counterparts. While women occupy the home, men are outside in an office having an important meeting, in a party and so on. One lesson learned from most of the male-oriented advertisements is that they need to be able to afford luxurious products to be attractive. These stereotypes not only promote materialism but also create misconception about what women really want from men.

            Obviously, business owners use advertising to reinforce gender stereotypes solely because they financially benefit from them. 

References

 Chiao, JY, Bowman, NE, Gill, H 2008, The Political Gender Gap: Gender Bias in Facial

Inferences that Predict Voting Behavior, Yale University, USA, viewed 31 March 2012, <http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.  0003666>

Ganahl, JD, Prinsen, TJ & Netzley, SB 2003, A Content Analysis of Prime

Time Commercials: A Contextual Framework of Gender Representation1. Sex Roles, 49(9/10), pp. 545-551, viewed 3 April 2012, retrieved from Research Library. (Document ID: 532799781).

Osburn, J 2006, An overview of Social Role Valorization theory. The SRV Journal, 1(1),

pp. 4-13, viewed 29 March 2012, < http://www.srvip.org/overview _SRV_Osburn.pdf>.