Gender Stereotypes in Advertisements

Gender stereotypes are when individuals are expected to act in a particular way based on
societies expectation related to their gender. Traditional gender roles go back to a time when
there were unequal rules as to how people were expected to act. Traditionally, men were
expected to be strong and aggressive while girls were expected to be kind, nurturing, emotional
and domestic – they were expected to handle the house chores while men were to earn for the
house. Gender stereotypes also largely impact who people find good looking or not. People try
their best to achieve unrealistic standards of beauty of what they see in the media. Dieting,
obsessive exercising, and getting plastic surgery are some examples of this. Gender stereotypes
also police people’s emotions – like girls are not expected to show anger and boys are not
supposed to be empathetic, emotional, or nurturing. However, as times change, people’s
expectations have also changed in most parts of the world. To change the mind set of every
person in the world would take a couple more years but we’ve come a long way since the
1930s.

When we talk about advertisements, they are usually shown through mainstream media
platforms like radio stations, television, magazines, newspapers. How men and women are
portrayed in advertisements, shows how the particular gender plays a role in society. This also
largely impacts the minds of the youth as they consider things, they see in ads to be ‘normal’.
The United Kingdom has banned gender stereotyping advertisements in the country as they
believe that ads that show gender stereotypes can affect children in harmful ways. A menstrual
pad company called ‘Always’ asked a group of children and young adults on what they
understand from the phase ‘Like a Girl’ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

Given below are a few examples of gender stereotypes in advertisements –

This advertisement was published in 1974 in a Playboy magazine. It was an ad for Weyenberg
Massagic Shoes. This advertisement implies to keep a woman near your feet, naked.

The advertisement above came from the Department of State US. It implies that women are
useless in other in situation, but the Department of State has finally found a use for them.

A very well-known MTR advertisement displays that the lady of the house has to cook a
different meal for each family member when suddenly, she has multiple hands like ‘Goddess
Durga’ and manages to satisfy everyone’s requirements. This ad shows a very unreasonable
portrayal of women where everybody in the household has too many expectations from them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEal64YLTlE

Gender stereotypes also include racism. Men and women are both expected to be fair. Dark
skin is looked down upon, not only in India, but also all around the world. Brands like Fair and
Lovely, Fair and Handsome focus on how to become fairer, and never fail to make people
believe that beauty lies in fairness. Such ads create an inferiority complex amongst the dark
people. Recently, the govt. banned ads that promote fairness and charged 12 crores to
companies not following it. These ads show how dark women are having a problem finding jobs
for themselves because they’re dark, how it’s difficult for them to get married because families
reject them because of their skin tone. A recent ad by Clean & Dry showed how women want
their 'private part' to be fair. It tries to deliver a message that says “your husband will love you
more” if your genitalia are clean and white.

An electronics company – Bajaj CFL is an electronics company that has also used racism in their
advertisements and received a large amount of backlash for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgwWcieoKuo&feature=youtu.be

We blame the society for being narrow minded and gender stereotypical, but what about the
people who we consider to be influential? They promote and endorse brands like Fair and
Lovely on national television. This directly impacts the minds of young children, and the “not so
educated” category of our country. Instead of making people self- conscious, companies should
consider it a responsibility of theirs to make people feel self- confident. Media is the most
influential on the public, thus, it should focus on creating empowering content and
advertisements for viewers.

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