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The Changing Roles of Gender in Advertising: Past, Present, and Future

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DOI: 10.25364/02.7:2020.2.3

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The Changing Roles of Gender in
Advertising: Past, Present, and Future
Research Article

Eirini Tsichla
Assistant Professor, University of Western Macedonia, Greece
[email protected]

Contemporary Southeastern Europe, 2020, 7(2), 28-44

DOI 10.25364/02.7:2020.2.3

Contemporary Southeastern Europe is an online, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal that publishes original,
scholarly, and policy-oriented research on issues relevant to societies in Southeastern Europe. For more information,
please contact us at [email protected] or visit our website at www.contemporarysee.org
 The Changing Roles of Gender in
Advertising: Past, Present, and Future
Eirini Tsichla*

The purpose of this paper is to navigate the rich academic literature on

gender portrayals in advertising, and then to provide an overview on key
findings and trends observed throughout the years. For several decades,
women in advertising were likely to be depicted in traditional and domestic
roles and were excluded from empowering roles and professional settings.
Some progress has been acknowledged during the last decades, however, it
seems that female role stereotyping is becoming subtler but still remains
present. Male depictions have changed as well, moving from mere
traditional masculine portrayals to a greater variety of roles, including
decorative and family ones. In addition, the paper offers a cultural
perspective by summarizing key findings regarding the relationship of
gender stereotyping in advertisements and various country gender indices.
Popular methodologies employed by content analytic studies in print
advertisements are also presented. Finally, the paper accentuates current
developments and tendencies regarding gender portrayals in advertising
and outlines a research agenda that proposes timely and promising avenues
for future studies.

Keywords: Gender stereotypes, advertising, gender roles

Introduction
Few domains in advertising have received such abundant academic attention as
gender portrayals in advertising. The investigation of gender stereotypes was
initiated in the 1960s, propelled by feminist thought and remained timely and
relevant due to the evolution of gender roles in society that challenged
traditional structures of gender hierarchy and raised ethical considerations
about the representation of women in the media. Today, almost 60 years later,
social movements like #Me Too and Time’s Up breathe new life into the
conversation about women’s’ sexualization and objectification, and the
investigation of gender portrayals continues to generate thought-provoking
findings. The pervasive and ethically questionable nature of advertising has
been repeatedly noted.1

* Eirini Tsichla is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Digital Media of

the University of Western Macedonia in Greece. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from
the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an MSc in Marketing from the University of Stirling, UK
and a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her research interests lie in
the field of advertising, gender and emotion. She has published articles in international peer
reviewed journals such as the International Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Marketing
Communications, Communication Research Reports and the International Review on Public and
Nonprofit Marketing. Her work has been also presented in international marketing and advertising
conferences including the European Marketing Academy Conference (EMAC) and the International
Conference on Research in Advertising (ICORIA).
1 See Pollay, Richard. 1986. The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of

Advertising. Journal of Marketing 50(2), 18-36.

28
 The Changing Roles of Gender in Advertising: Past, Present, and Future

The general consensus is that advertising reflects society in a distorted fashion,

calling attention to and exaggerating some aspects of everyday life. Advertisers
are often accused of using such distortion in order to push boundaries in creating
attention-grabbing advertising messages that have stopping power and generate
hype in a cluttered media landscape.2

On the other hand, gender stereotypes are considered popular due to their
clarity, conciseness, and ability to get quickly the message across.3 In that sense,
stereotypes are regarded by advertisers as general knowledge that prevents
distraction, is attractive to audiences, encourages focus on the brand message
and simplifies cognitive processes and categorization on consumers’ behalf.4
Hence, advertising practitioners rely on simplistic and reductive stereotypes
that convey a large amount of information in a succinct fashion.5 From a cynical
perspective, advertisers continue to use gender stereotypes because they work,
otherwise, they either would have stopped using them or would be driven out of
business by companies that use more ethical and effective advertisements devoid
of stereotypical portrayals.6
According to feminist thought, advertising in popular media clearly contributes
to gender inequality by promoting sexism and distorted image ideals as valid
and acceptable.7 Traditional gender roles depicted in advertisements are
hierarchical, as men are more often presented in a higher position, whereas
women are more often depicted in inferior and passive roles.8 Although the role
of women in society has begun to shift since the 1960s, numerous studies indicate
that female portrayals in advertising have been slow to adjust to their evolving
status. Particularly, the depiction of women in professional roles and as voices
of authority reports a significant time lag before its depiction in advertising
imagery.9 Even recently, studies postulate that advertisements do not reflect

2 Rumbo, Joseph. 2002. Consumer Resistance in a World of Advertising Clutter: The Case of
Adbusters. Psychology & Marketing, 19(2), 127-48; Zotos, Yorgos and Eirini Tsichla. 2014. Female
Stereotypes in Print Advertising: A Retrospective Analysis. Procedia-social and behavioral
sciences 148, 446-54.
3 Pollay, The Distorted Mirror, 27
4 Windels, Kasey. 2016. Stereotypical or just Typical: How Do US Practitioners View the Role and

Function of Gender Stereotypes in Advertisements? International Journal of Advertising 35(5), 864-

87.
5 Patterson, Maurice / O’Malley, Lisa and Vicky Story. 2009. Women in Advertising: Representations,

Repercussions, Responses. Irish Marketing Review 20(1), 9-22.

6 Miller, Alan and Satoshi Kanazawa. 2007. Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From

Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire: Two Evolutionary
Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do. New York: Perigee Book.
7 Kilbourne, Jean. 1999. Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power

of Advertising. Free Press; Lazar, Michelle. 2006. Discover the Power of Femininity! Analyzing
Global “Power Femininity” in Local Advertising. Feminist Media Studies 6(4), 505-17.
8 Gallagher, Margaret. 2004. The Impact of Monitoring Media Images of Women, in Critical Readings:

Media and Gender, edited by Carter, Cynthia and Linda Steiner. Maidenhead: Open University
Press, 148-61.
9 Gilly, Mary. 1988. Sex Roles in Advertising: A Comparison of Television Advertisements in

Australia, Mexico, and the United States. Journal of Marketing 52(2), 75-85.

29
 Eirini Tsichla

contemporary gender roles,10 raising concerns that advertisers rely on

stereotypical images that no longer exist.11
Recently however, advertising seems to communicate new meanings of gender
by constructing images of active, confident, or sexually powerful women and
loving fathers, evident in the advertising appeals of “femvertising” and
“dadvertising.” To a certain degree, these shifts reflect societal changes
regarding the role and depictions of men and women.12 A possible reason behind
this progress could be the corporate tendency to embrace and effectively
communicate practices of brand responsibility or brand advocacy 13 in order to
appear more socially responsible and satisfy the audience, especially the
ethically conscious millennial consumers.
Taking all the above into consideration, it is evident that gender portrayals in
advertising constitute a dynamic research domain that continues to evolve and
keeps yielding important insights for both academics and practitioners. The
purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the early and recent pertinent
literature, present two coding instruments frequently employed in the
investigation of gender portrayals in print advertisements, and highlight
important areas for future research endeavors.

Gender stereotypes
A stereotype is defined as a group concept that reflects inferior judgment and
gives rise to a simple structure, suggesting that stereotypes are predominantly
evaluative.14 According to Barker,15 a stereotype involves the reduction of
persons to a set of exaggerated, usually negative, character traits. Stereotypes
do not necessarily bear negative connotations, though they may lead to
oversimplified conceptions and expectations that devaluate and restrict
potential opportunities of subjects of a social category.16 Gender stereotypes are
defined as beliefs that certain attributes differentiate women and men.17 In that
sense, gender stereotypes provide a limited “vocabulary of interaction,”
encouraging people to think and speak of women primarily in terms of their

10 Plakoyiannaki, Emanouella and Yorgos Zotos. 2009. Female Role Stereotypes in Print Advertising:
Identifying Associations with Magazine and Product Categories. European Journal of Marketing
43(11/12), 1411-34; Tsichla, Eirini and Yorgos Zotos. 2016. Gender Portrayals Revisited: Searching
for Explicit and Implicit Stereotypes in Cypriot Magazine Advertisements. International Journal of
Advertising 35(6), 983-1007.
11 DeYoung, Susan and Frederick Crane. 1992. Females’ Attitudes toward the Portrayal of Women

in Advertising: A Canadian Study. International Journal of Advertising 11(3), 249-55.

12 Kapoor, Deepa and Alka Munjal. 2019. Self-Consciousness and Emotions Driving Femvertising: A

Path Analysis of Women’s attitude Towards Femvertising, Forwarding Intention and Purchase
Intention. Journal of Marketing Communications 25(2), 137-57.
13 Champlin, Sara / Sterbenk, Yvette / Windels, Kasey and Maddison Poteet. 2019. How Brand-Cause

Fit Shapes Real World Advertising Messages: A Qualitative Exploration of ‘Femvertising’.

International Journal of Advertising 38(8), 1240-63.
14 Perkins, Tessa. 1997. Rethinking Stereotypes, in The Media Studies Reader, edited by O’ Sullivan,

Tim and Jewkes, Yvonne. Bristol: Arrowsmith, 75-85.

15 Barker, Chris. 1999. Television, Globalization and Cultural Identities. London: Open University

Press.
16 Eisend, Martin. 2010. A Meta-Analysis of Gender Roles in Advertising. Journal of the Academy of

Marketing Science 38(4), 418-40; Zotos and Tsichla, Female Stereotypes in Print Advertising, 447.
17 Ashmore, Richard and Frances Del Boca. 1981. Conceptual Approaches to Stereotypes and

Stereotyping, in Cognitive Processes in Stereotyping and Intergroup Behavior, edited by Hamilton,

David. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1-35.

30
 The Changing Roles of Gender in Advertising: Past, Present, and Future

relationship to men, family, or their sexuality.18 According to Kay Deaux and

Laurie Lewis,19 gender stereotypes have four different and independent
components: trait descriptors (e.g., self-assertion, concern for others), physical
characteristics (e.g. hair length, body height), role behaviors (e.g., leader, taking
care of children), and occupational status (e.g. truck driver, housewife). Every
integral part is associated with a masculine and feminine version, which is
strongly related to males and females, respectively. Each gender stereotyping
component may lead to negative consequences such as body dissatisfaction,
feelings of insecurity, reduced self-confidence, and confinement of professional
opportunities. These findings raise key concerns, especially considering that
women tend to be more sensitive than men to the detail of advertising messages
and get more emotionally involved with advertising.20 In addition, exposure to
sexually explicit images of women in ads may induce violence against women
and rape myth acceptance.21 However, Moss-Racusin and Good22 argue that
gender stereotypes impact both genders, creating unrealistic expectations for
men as well. Hence, the European Parliament’s resolution on eliminating gender
stereotypes in the EU (2013) addresses these concerns, acknowledging the
limiting depictions of women in the media and advertising in particular and
calling for actions that deconstruct gender stereotypes.

The Mirror versus the Mold argument

The nature of the relationship between gender-related values of society and
gender portrayals in advertising is the focus of a long-standing debate. Two
opposing arguments have been suggested, namely the “mirror” versus the “mold”
argument23. The “mirror” argument posits that advertising reflects values that
already prevail in the society.24 As a result, men and women featured in
advertisements generally have been typecast to adhere to the dominant concepts
regarding gender roles.25 According to this view, given the multiple interrelated
factors in the contemporary socioeconomic and political environment that
influence the value system of a society, the impact of advertising seems
insignificant. A meta-analysis by Eisend26 provides empirical support in favor of
the “mirror” argument, suggesting that advertising has historically reflected,

18 Tuchman, Gaye. 1979. The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media, in Hearth and
Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media, edited by Tuchman, Gaye / Daniels, Arlene and James
Benet. New York: Oxford, 3-38.
19 Deaux, Kay and Laurie L. Lewis. 1984. Structure of Gender Stereotypes: Interrelationships among

Components and Gender Label. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(5), 991-1004.
20 Meyers-Levy, Joan and Durairaj Maheswaran. 1991. Exploring Differences in Males’ and Females’

Processing Strategies. Journal of Consumer Research 18(1), 63-70.

21 Lanis, Kyra and Katherine Covell. 1995. Images of Women in Advertisements: Effects on Attitudes

Related to Sexual Aggression. Sex Roles 32(9-10), 639-49; MacKay, Natalie and Katherine Covell.
1997. The Impact of Women in Advertisements on Attitudes toward Women. Sex Roles 36(9-10), 573-
83.
22 Moss-Racusin, Corinne and Jessica Good. 2015. Measure of a Man: Outcomes of Gender

Stereotyping for Men and Masculinity (Editorial). Social Psychology 46(4), 179-81.
23 Pollay, The Distorted Mirror, 26; Pollay, Richard. 1987. On the Value of Reflections on the Values

in “The Distorted Mirror”. Journal of Marketing 51(3), 104-9; Zotos and Tsichla, Female Stereotypes
in Print Advertising, 447; Grau, Stacy and Yorgos Zotos. 2016. Gender Stereotypes in Advertising: A
Review of Current Research. International Journal of Advertising 35(5), 761-70.
24 Holbrook, Morris. 1987. Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, What’s Unfair in the Reflections on

Advertising?. Journal of Marketing 51(3), 95-103; Eisend, A Meta-Analysis, 421.

25 Holbrook, Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, 96.
26 Eisend, A Meta-Analysis, 436.

31
 Eirini Tsichla

rather than challenged, female stereotypes and roles in society, but the
characteristics of women’s advertising depictions in advertising tend to lag
behind female contemporary roles in society.
On the contrary, according to the “mold” argument, advertising molds and
impacts the values of its target audience.27 Drawing on cultivation theory,28
media content influences social and psychological attitudes toward men and
women. Ultimately, people tend to incorporate gender clichés presented by the
media into their own concepts of reality, forming perceptions of themselves 29 and
behaving in a consistent manner in order to match the stereotyped images that
are omnipresent everywhere.
Taking all the above into consideration, it could be suggested that the truth lies
somewhere in a continuum between the “mirror” and the “mold” argument. Since
advertising, as a system of visual representation, creates meaning within the
“circuit” of culture, it seems that it both reflects and contributes to culture.30
Advertising proposes lifestyles and forms of self-presentation that individuals
use to define their roles in the society.31 The majority of ad campaigns invoke
gender identity, drawing their imagery primarily from the stereotyped
iconography of masculinity and femininity.32

The Past: Overview of the Literature

Early studies conducted in the USA during the 1960s and 1970s indicate that
stereotypes existed in terms of setting, as females were limited to explicit
domestic roles such as happy housewives and mothers, while men were usually
depicted outdoors and in professional settings. In addition, women were likely to
be portrayed dependent on men’s protection, appear as unintelligent consumers
incapable of making important decisions, or were sexually objectified.33 On the
contrary, professional women were notably underrepresented. Even though
more recent studies document a decrease in female housewife and dependency
roles, a significant increase of decorative roles has been noted, while
representations of women in professional settings and career roles are still
rare.34 In a meta-analysis of studies on gender roles in TV advertisements from

27 Pollay, The Distorted Mirror, 27; Pollay, On the Value of Reflections, 104.
28 Gerbner, George and Larry Gross. 1973. Cultural Indicators: The Social Reality of Television
Drama. Pennsylvania University, Philadelphia: Annenberg School of Communications.
29 Dahlén, Micael / Rosengren, Sara and Edith Smit. 2014. Why the Marketer’s View Matters as nuch

as the Message: Speaking down to the Consumer speaks badly to a Brand’s Image. Journal of
Advertising Research 54(3), 304-12.
30 Albers-Miller, Nancy and Betsy Gelb. 1996. Business Advertising Appeals as a Mirror of Cultural

Dimensions: A Study of Eleven Countries. Journal of Advertising 25(4), 57-70; Hall, Stuart. 2001.
Encoding/decoding, in Culture, Media, Language, edited by Hall, Stuart / Durham, Meenakshi and
Douglas Kellner. MA: Blackwell Publishing, 163-73.
31 Plakoyiannaki, Emmanuella / Mathioudaki, Kalliopi / Dimitratos, Pavlos and Yorgos Zotos. 2008.

Images of Women in Online Advertisements of Global Products: Does Sexism exist? Journal of
Business Ethics 83(1), 101-12.
32 Schroeder, Jonathan and Detlev Zwick. 2004. Mirrors of Masculinity: Representation and Identity

in Advertising Images. Consumption Markets & Culture 7(1), 21-52.

33 See Courtney, Alice and Sarah Lockeretz. 1971. A Woman’s Place: An Analysis of the Roles

Portrayed by Women in Magazine Advertisements. Journal of Marketing Research 8(1), 92-5;

Belkaoui, Ahmed and Janice Belkaoui. 1976. A Comparative Analysis of the Roles Portrayed by
Women in Print Advertisements: 1958, 1970, 1972. Journal of Marketing Research 13(2), 168-72.
34 Mitchell, Paul and Wendy Taylor. 1990. Polarizing Trends in Female Portrayal in UK Advertising.

European Journal of Marketing 24(5), 41-49; Piron, Francis and Murray, Young. 1996. Consumer
Advertising in Germany and the United States: A Study of Sexual Explicitness and Cross-Gender

32
 The Changing Roles of Gender in Advertising: Past, Present, and Future

1971 to 2005 that covered 28 countries, Eisend 35 found that females were more
likely to be depicted in domestic environments, as product users, in dependent
roles, as younger than males; they tended to be presented visually (not speaking)
and to provide opinions or nonscientific arguments rather than facts. The study
concluded that stereotyping persists, particularly for women, despite significant
changes in the educational, occupational, and societal status of women. Of all
dimensions, occupational status and sexualization represent the components
with the highest degree of stereotyping. Other studies suggest that gender
stereotyping is decreasing, though this trend could be attributed to the fact that
is becoming more subtle.36 Furnham and Paltzer37 observed a declining trend in
gender-role stereotyping in Western countries, but this progress is limited to
certain categories like credibility, role, and age.
As far as male portrayals are concerned, evidence from the UK38 and Greece39
shows that men tend to be portrayed with themes of sex appeal, career
orientation, or occupied with activities outside the home. At the same time, the
depiction of muscular bodies that propagate the image of a strong male icon is
becoming increasingly popular in magazine advertisements.40 In that sense,
pictures of male bodies have now become objects of display, representing a
physical and sexual ideal.41 According to Rohlinger,42 the “erotic male” is the
most prominent portrayal of masculinity in a sample of magazine
advertisements drawn from 1987 and 1997. On the other hand, the tendency to
portray males as authorities seems to persist,43 as several studies indicate that
advertising rarely depicts males in domestic settings and family roles.44

Contact. Journal of International Consumer Marketing 8(3-4), 211-28; Plakoyiannaki and Zotos,
Female Role Stereotypes in Print Advertising, 1124.
35 Eisend, A Meta-Analysis, 431.
36 Wolin, Lori. 2003. Gender Issues in Advertising: An Oversight Synthesis of Research: 1970–

2002. Journal of Advertising Research 43(1), 111-29; Hovland, Roxanne / McMahan, Carolynn / Lee,
Guiohk / Hwang, Jang-Sun and Juran Kim. 2005. Gender Role Portrayals in American and Korean
Advertisements. Sex Roles 53(11-12), 887-99.
37 Furnham, Adrian and Stephanie Paltzer. 2010. The Portrayal of Men and Women in Television

Advertisements: An updated Review of 30 Studies published since 2000. Scandinavian Journal of

Psychology 51(3), 216-36.
38 Lysonski, Steven. 1985. Role Portrayals in British Magazine Advertisements. European Journal

of Marketing 19(7), 37-55.

39 Zotos, Yorgos and Steven Lysonski. 1994. Gender Representations: The Case of Greek Magazine

Advertisements. Journal of Euromarketing 3(2), 27-47.

40 Kolbe, Richard and Paul Albanese. 1996. Man to Man: A Content Analysis of Sole-Male Images in

Male-Audience Magazines. Journal of Advertising 25(4), 1-20.

41 Patterson, Maurice and Richard Elliot. 2002. Negotiating Masculinities: Advertising and the

Inversion of the Male Gaze. Consumption, Markets and Culture 5(3), 231-49.
42 Rohlinger, Deana. 2002. Eroticizing Men: Cultural Influences on Advertising and Male

Objectification. Sex Roles 46(3-4), 61-74.

43 Furnham, Adrian and Twiggy Mak. 1999. Sex-role Stereotyping in Television Commercials: A

Review and Comparison of Fourteen Studies Done on Five Continents over 25 Years. Sex Roles 41(5-
6), 413-37; Furnham and Paltzer, The Portrayal of Men and Women in Television Advertisements,
218.
44 Gentry, James and Robert Harrison. 2010. Is Advertising a Barrier to Male Movement toward

Gender Change? Marketing Theory 10(1), 74-96; Zayer, Linda. 2010. A Typology of Men’s
Conceptualizations of Ideal Masculinity in Advertising. Advertising and Society Review 11(1)
(accessed: 14 December 2019).

33
 Eirini Tsichla

A cultural perspective
Over the last few decades, the literature of gender stereotypes in advertising has
proliferated to a number of comparative studies of gender roles portrayed in
different cultural contexts.45 Countries’ scores in Hofstede’s Masculinity Index
are commonly employed in order to examine whether gender stereotypes are
more common in highly masculine rather than feminine countries. The findings
were conflicting: To illustrate, Judith Wiles, Charles Wiles, and Anders
Tjernlund46 showed that high-masculinity countries were associated with higher
percentages of men’s working roles and a higher percentage of female decorative
roles, while other studies produced findings opposite from those predicted by
Hofstede’s Masculinity Index,47 concluding that that there are other forces in
each country (i.e., self-regulation of advertising) affecting gender stereotyping in
advertising. In a similar vein, several researchers48 used the gender
empowerment measure (GEM), a degree of women’s participation in political,
economic, and professional activities. Eisend49 demonstrated that gender-related
values in society, as indicated by GEM, precede and influence stereotypical
depictions in advertising. However, both the Masculinity Index and GEM seem
to have a relatively small predictive value. On the contrary, Matthes, Prieler,
and Adam50 analyzed a sample of advertisements from a total of thirteen Asian,
American, and European countries and demonstrated that gender stereotypes in
TV advertising were independent of a country’s gender indices such as Hofstede’s
Masculinity Index, GLOBE’s Gender Egalitarianism Index, the Gender Equality
Index, and the Global Gender Gap index. These findings challenge the belief that
stereotypes in advertisements depend on developments related to gender
equality and indicate that despite variations in gender-role portrayals across
cultures, advertising visuals are perhaps becoming more universal due to global
markets and networked publics.51

Investigating gender portrayals in print advertisements: The coding

schemes
The vast majority of research studies conducted within the realm of gender
stereotypes implemented quantitative content analysis in order to detect the
specific types of stereotypical portrayals. A useful instrument for the
investigation of gender role stereotypes should reflect a variety of men and

45 An, Daechun and Sanghoon Kim. 2007. Relating Hofstede’s Masculinity Dimension to Gender Role
Portrayals in Advertising. International Marketing Review 24(2), 181-207.
46 Wiles, Judith / Wiles, Charles and Anders Tjernlund. 1995. A Comparison of Gender Role

Portrayals in Magazine Advertising: The Netherlands, Sweden and the USA. European Journal of
Marketing 29(11), 35-49.
47 Odekerken‐Schröder, Gaby / De Wulf, Kristof and Natascha Hofstee. 2002. Is Gender Stereotyping

in Advertising More Prevalent in Masculine Countries? International Marketing Review 19(4), 408-
19; Paek, Hye-Jin / Nelson, Michelle and Alexandra Vilela. 2011. Examination of Gender-Role
Portrayals in Television Advertising Across Seven Countries. Sex Roles 64(3-4), 192-207.
48 Moon, Young and Kara Chan. 2002. Gender Portrayal in Hong Kong and Korean Children’s TV

Commercials: A Cross‐Cultural Comparison. Asian Journal of Communication 12(2), 100-19; Paek,

Nelson and Vilela, Examination of Gender-Role Portrayals in Television Advertising, 202.
49 Eisend, A Meta-Analysis, 436.
50 Matthes, Jörg / Prieler, Michael and Karoline Adam. 2016. Gender-Role Portrayals in Television

Advertising across the Globe. Sex Roles 75(7-8), 314-27.

51 Paek, Nelson and Vilela, Examination of Gender-Role Portrayals in Television Advertising, 203.

34
 The Changing Roles of Gender in Advertising: Past, Present, and Future

women’s roles. A popular coding scheme adopted by numerous studies in the

field52 is presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Categories for male and female stereotypes

Categories for female stereotypes Categories for male stereotypes
Women in traditional roles 1. The theme of sex appeal
1. Dependency 2. Dominant over women
2. Housewife 3. Authority figure
Women in decorative roles 4. Family man
3. Women concerned with physical attractiveness 5. Frustrated male
4. Women as sex objects 6. Activities and life outside the home
Women in non-traditional roles 7. Career oriented
5. Women in non-traditional activities 8. Nontraditional role
6. Career oriented women 9. Neutral
7. Voice of authority
Women portrayed as equal to men
8. Neutral

In 1979, Goffman suggested an innovative approach for the examination of

gender stereotypes called semiotic or frame analysis.53 Rather than observing
the manifest content of an advertisement, his primary focus was directed to more
subtle details implied by hands, eyes, knees, facial expressions, head and body
postures, relative sizes, body positioning, and head-eye aversion. These cues
work at a largely subconscious level to inform culturally bound ideas about
gender and are indicative of differences in social power, influence, and authority.
Through an analysis of purposefully selected print advertisements, he
illustrated that advertising imagery weakens women, as pictures of men reflect
confidence, competence, and authority, while women are cast as deferential and
childlike. His coding scheme enables the scrutiny of the relationships among men
and women shown in advertisements and consists of the following categories: (1)
“Relative size” that signals women’s inferiority through the depiction of women
as smaller and/or shorter than men, (2) “feminine touch,” a form of ritualistic
touch that indicates the female body’s delicacy and preciousness, (3) “function
ranking,” which pertains to the tendency of males rather than females to perform
the executive role and exercise control of the situation, (4) “ritualization of
subordination,” designed to capture the adoption of postures that signal the need
for protection and indicate submission and (5) “licensed withdrawal,” which
shows women removing themselves psychologically from the situation through
images of decontextualization, gaze aversion, and avoidance of action.

Overall, the stream of literature that adopts Goffman’s categories postulates

that contemporary advertising still places women in subordinate and dependent
positions that signal vulnerability and lower status. Only slight changes have
been detected regarding the type of stereotyping across time.54 For instance,

52 See Courtney and Lockeretz, A Woman’s Place, 93; Mitchell and Taylor, Polarizing Trends in
Female Portrayal in UK Advertising, 42; Lysonski, Role Portrayals in British Magazine
Advertisements, 41; Zotos and Lysonski, Gender Representations, 31; Plakoyiannaki and Zotos,
Female Role Stereotypes in Print Advertising, 1417.
53 Goffman, Erving. 1979. Gender Advertisements. London: Macmillan International Higher

Education.
54 See Umiker-Sebeok, Jean. 1996. Power and Construction of Gendered Spaces. International

Review of Sociology 6(3), 389-404; Kang, Mee-Eun. 1997. The Portrayal of Women’s Images in
Magazine Advertisements: Goffman’s Gender Analysis Revisited. Sex Roles 37(11-12), 979-97;
Lindner, Katharina. 2004. Images of Women in General Interest and Fashion Magazine

35
 Eirini Tsichla

there was more body display and licensed withdrawal in magazine

advertisements in 1991 compared to 1979.55 From 1950 to 2000, an increase of
men in suggestive poses and women in subordinate poses was recorded, as well
as a decrease in men performing the executive role.56

Tsichla and Zotos57 investigated the relationship between explicit stereotypical

portrayals and the subtler, implicit stereotyping suggested by Goffman (1979) in
an effort to understand whether contemporary egalitarian roles of men and
women depicted in advertising images contain subtle cues that signal
hierarchical patterns and therefore jeopardize progress in terms of equal
representation. The analysis revealed interesting patterns that can be
summarized as follows: (1) Women are size subordinated in the majority of
“dependency” portrayals and in a large number of “career oriented” and “neutral”
displays. (2) The overwhelming majority of females perform the subordinate
rather than the executive role when pictured with a male, with the highest
frequency observed in the “dependency portrayals.” (3) Feminine touch,
ritualization of subordination and licensed withdrawal are typical of women,
even in seemingly egalitarian portrayals such as “voice of authority” and “career
oriented.” (4) Body display is highly observed in several female roles including
“women in non-traditional activities,” “concerned with physical attractiveness,”
“housewife,” and “voice of authority.” (5) Ritualization of subordination was more
common in male roles such as “family man,” “neutral,” “non-traditional,” and
“theme of sex appeal” than “authority figure” and “career oriented” depictions.
(6) Body display does not prevail in male portrayals, but out of all the categories
it was most frequently identified in “the theme of sex appeal” and “dominant over
women” stereotypes.

In that sense, the size subordination of “career oriented” and “neutral” women
coupled with the almost exclusive performance of executive roles by males
reflects signals of incompetence and association with low-status occupations that
devaluate contemporary women’s status and achievements. Moreover, the
depiction of women in revealing attire across a variety of roles, from decorative
to non-traditional, indicates that through semiotic cues embedded in advertising
visuals, traditional patterns of gender hierarchy manage to manifest.58 As Masée
and Rosenblum59 encapsulate, change is as real as “Career Barbie,” considering
that the core identity of the professional woman is still sexually defined and
longs for masculine approval.60

The future: New roles and emerging trends

Recently, changing trends in gender portrayals have been noticed that seem to
renegotiate the role of gender in advertising. These include depictions of

Advertisements from 1955 to 2002. Sex Roles 51(7-8), 409-21; Mager, John and James Helgeson.
2011. Fifty years of Advertising Images: Some Changing Perspectives on Role Portrayals along with
Enduring Consistencies. Sex Roles 64(3-4), 238-52.
55 Kang, The Portrayal of Women’s Images in Magazine Advertisements, 990-2.
56 Mager and Helgeson, Fifty Years of Advertising images, 248.
57 Tsichla and Zotos, Gender Portrayals Revisited, 992-1000.
58 Tsichla and Zotos, Gender Portrayals Revisited, 999.
59 Massé, Michelle and Karen Rosenblum. 1988. Male and Female Created by Them: The Depiction

of Gender in the Advertising of Traditional Women’s and Men’s Magazines. Women’s Studies
International Forum 11(2), 127-44.
60 Massé and Rosenblum, Male and Female Created by Them, 142.

36
 The Changing Roles of Gender in Advertising: Past, Present, and Future

empowering, active, confident, and sexually powerful women, figurations of the

“new man” and the “new father”61 as well as androgynous, non-binary gender
portrayals that attempt to address the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender
consumer (LGBT) segment.

Femvertising, defined as “advertising that challenges traditional female

advertising stereotypes”62 employs pro-female talent, messages, and imagery to
empower women and girls and eliminate gender-based disparities.63 Even
though advertising has used feminist themes before, this is the first time that
an advertising appeal attempts to challenge stereotypes created and perpetuated
by advertising itself.64 Other popular themes employed by brands in order to
celebrate and empower women include attractiveness and body image concerns,
responding to negative “self-talk,” and addressing taboo topics related to
women.65 Numerous advertisements featuring femvertising appeals have gone
viral and have proven tremendously successful,66 leading to more positive
attitudes towards these ads than traditional advertising.67 However,
femvertising has faced criticism as well, evolving around the commodification of
feminism and gender disparities68 and the failure to highlight women’s financial,
career, or athletic success.69

In a study analyzing 200 advertisements drawn from the US and UK editions of

upmarket women’s’ magazines, Kohrs and Gill70 identified an established visual
pattern of female portrayals described as follows:

Rather than appearing small, passive or deferential, women are presented as

bold, confident and powerful, with strong and assertive patterns of looking […]
These women are being hailed through a composite of signifiers of assertiveness,
boldness and power that together comprise a kind of confident appearing.

The depiction of women as appearing confident involves a direct gaze at the

viewer, neutral facial expressions, heads held up high, and confident stances
with the body erect that signals superiority and disdain.71 Interestingly, the
study did not find evidence of common subtle cues that denote gender hierarchy
suggested by Goffman, like relative size, canting positions, function ranking, and

61 Kohrs, Kirsten and Rosalind Gill. In Press. Confident Appearing: Revisiting Gender Advertisements
in Contemporary Culture, in The Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality, edited by
Baxter, Judith and Jo Angouri. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 1-27. (accessed: 12 January 2020).
62 Åkestam, Nina / Rosengren, Sara and Micael Dahlen. 2017. Advertising “like a girl”: Toward a

Better Understanding of “Femvertising” and Its Effects. Psychology & Marketing 34(8), 795-806.
63 Zeisler, Andi. 2016. We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling

of a Political Movement. New York: Public Affairs.

64 Åkestam, Rosengren and Dahlen, Advertising “like a girl”, 795.
65 Champlin, Sterbenk, Windels and Poteet, How Brand-Cause Fit Shapes Real World Advertising

Messages, 1243.
66 Schultz, E. J. 2014. Ad Age’s 2014 Advertiser of the Year: Under Armour. AdAge, 8 December 2014

(accessed:10 January 2020).

67 Åkestam, Rosengren and Dahlen, Advertising “like a girl”, 802.
68 Mahdawi, Arwa. 2015. Twerking Men and Ass-Kicking Girls: How Advertising Learnt to Gender

Flip. The Guardian, 16 February 2015 (accessed: 8 January 2020).

69 Spears, Nancy and Clinton Amos. 2014. Twentieth Century Female Ad Images: Cultural

Interconnections, Social Learning, and the Dialectical Logic of Advertising. Journal of Business
Research 67(4), 441-8.
70 Kohrs and Gill, Confident Appearing, 14
71 Goffman, Gender Advertisements, 40.

37
 Eirini Tsichla

licensed withdrawal. In a similar vein, in a study examining the practitioners’

perspective on female portrayals in advertising, Middleton, Turnbull, and de
Oliveira72 described a new role stereotype, the “sexually powerful” woman who
is in control and gets what she wants because she is sexually attractive, as
opposed to being sexually objectified in order to be looked at or consumed for
male gratification.
On the other hand, the term dadvertising is used to describe commodified
representations of fatherhood that suggest that “the new ideal masculine man is
an involved parent and an emotionally vulnerable partner.”73 Similar to
femvertising, dadvertising is suggested to primarily appeal to the female
audience and employs themes of gender egalitarianism in service of personal and
familial empowerment politics. Hence, men are depicted as being regarded as
heroes by their children, devoted fathers, loving husbands, and less often,
domestic workers. According to Baxter, Kulczynski, and Ilicic,74 advertising
messages featuring fathers as caregivers invoke positive responses regardless of
people’s ideological perspectives on gender. In a longitudinal analysis from 2003
and 2005, Fowler and Thomas75 indicated that the role of father in advertising
has increased, suggesting an acceptance of men in domestic and childbearing
activities.

Even though companies seem to direct considerable attention to the historically

ignored lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) audience in an effort to
broaden their customer base,76 explicit appeals to gay consumers in mainstream
media have been systematically avoided in the fear of alienating heterosexual
consumers.77 Hence, advertisers often create covert strategies using encrypted
messages that appear innocuous to heterosexual readers, but possibly
interpreted as “gay” by bisexual, lesbian, and gay readers.78 Such messages
include the use of a single person instead of an opposite sexed couple, the
representation of androgynous body parts,79 and the use of partially clothed,
muscular men with sexually ambiguous appeal.80 In that sense, a closer look at
the increasing images of male objectification and sexualization in advertising
suggests that many of these images tend to represent male models with an

72 Middleton, Karen / Turnbull, Sarah and Mauro de Oliveira. 2019. Female Role Portrayals in
Brazilian Advertising: Are Outdated Cultural Stereotypes Preventing Change? International
Journal of Advertising, 1-20.
73 Leader, Caroline. 2019. Dadvertising: Representations of Fatherhood in Procter & Gamble’s Tide

Commercials. Communication Culture & Critique 12(1), 72-89 (76).

74 Baxter, Stacey / Kulczynski, Alicia and Jasmina Ilicic. 2016. Ads Aimed at Dads: Exploring

Consumers’ Reactions towards Advertising that Conforms and Challenges Traditional Gender Role
Ideologies. International Journal of Advertising 35(6), 970-82.
75 Fowler, Kendra and Veronica Thomas. 2015. A Content Analysis of Male Roles in Television

Advertising: Do Traditional Roles Still Hold?. Journal of Marketing Communications 21(5), 356-71.
76 Zotos and Tsichla, Female Stereotypes in Print Advertising, 452.
77 Greenlee, Timothy. 2004. Mainstream Marketers Advertise to Gays and Lesbians: Strategic Issues

and Research Agenda, in Diversity in Advertising, edited by Williams, Jerome / Lee, Wei-Na and
Curtis Haugtvedt. London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 357-67; Oakenfull, Gillian. 2004. Targeting
Consumer Segments Based on Sexual Orientation: Can Advertisers Swing Both Ways?, in Diversity
in Advertising, edited by Williams, Jerome / Lee, Wei-Na and Curtis Haugtvedt. London: Lawrence
Erlbaum, 369-81.
78 Sender, Katherine. 1999. Selling Sexual Subjectivities: Audiences Respond to Gay Window

Advertising. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 16(2), 172-96.

79 Kahn, Eve. 1994. The Glass Closet. Print XLVIII, 21-31.
80 Swisher, Kara. 1993. Targeting the Gay Market: Companies Spending More of their Ad Dollars to

Attract Affluent Group. Washington Post, 25 April 1993, H1.

38
 The Changing Roles of Gender in Advertising: Past, Present, and Future

unspecified sexuality. Such depictions are able to appeal to multiple audiences

as they do not bare specific sexual connotations, liberating the viewers to project
their desired meanings.81 Alternatively, advertising targeting the LGBT
community was directed to LGBT-specific publications. Only lately, in the light
of significant changes in the societal landscape in terms of visibility and
acceptance and the acceleration of marriage equality, some LGBT-specific ads
appear in mainstream media.82

The aforementioned emerging trends highlight the repeated call for the
modification of the existing coding schemes83 that would enable advertising
researchers to fully examine contemporary gender stereotypes without the
danger of neglecting or oversimplifying their projected meanings. It is surprising
that despite the rich literature that has been developed over the years on gender
stereotypes, few changes to existing coding schemes have been proposed, such as
dropping categories that appear no longer relevant. For instance, several
researchers argue that categories proposed by Goffman such as relative size and
function raking seldom appear in modern advertisements.84 Although existing
coding schemes are able to capture sex object portrayals and the display of naked
skin, they fall short of differentiating between passive, sexually objectified
depictions and sexually powerful, confident, and empowering portrayals of
women. Similarly, non-binary gender, trans, and androgynous depictions cannot
be captured with the existing coding instruments. An image of a professionally
dressed “superwoman” figure arriving home from work and occupying herself
with domestic activities, trying to balance home life, work, and family would be
oversimplified if considered and coded as a simple housewife. In that sense,
future research could work towards this direction and update the existing coding
instruments.

In addition, during the last years significant developments have occurred in the
media landscape. On one hand, advertising spending in print media has
decreased and changed in structure. In Greece for instance, male magazines and
magazines with a more general audience nowadays feature only a limited
number of advertisements, impeding attempts to draw conclusions about the
type of stereotypes diffused to particular audiences. On the other hand, the
boundaries between advertising and other media are continuously blurring,
making it hard to distinguish between commercial and editorial content in
newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and social media posts. This trend presents
a new, challenging, and almost unexplored territory for the investigation of
gender stereotypes that would surely yield interesting insights.

81 Rohlinger, Eroticizing Men, 65.

82 Nölke, Ana-Isabel. 2018. Making Diversity Conform? An Intersectional, Longitudinal Analysis of
LGBT-specific Mainstream Media Advertisements. Journal of Homosexuality 65(2), 224-55.
83 Zotos and Tsichla, Female Stereotypes in Print Advertising, 454; Grau and Zotos, Gender

Stereotypes in Advertising, 768.

84 Tsichla and Zotos, Gender Portrayals Revisited, 994; Kohrs and Gill, Confident Appearing, 10.

39
 Eirini Tsichla

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