Gender and Multicultural Issues in Advertising: Stages on the Research Highway

Abstract

Stern contextualizes the six articles in the special issue of Journal of Advertising dedicated to the impact of gender and multicultural issues as on advertising. She presents an overview of the theoretical relationship between evolutionary stages of gender research, formerly called “feminist” or “women's studies,” and multicultural research, an outgrowth of cultural studies. To situate the current trends in advertising research, she begins by addressing the nexus between feminist criticism, defined as the cross-disciplinary study of women, and multicultural criticism, defined as the cross-disciplinary study of marginalized populations including (but not limited to) women. Next, she turns to the historical development of gender studies in the modern and post-modern era—the generation from 1960 to the present — to address the interwoven themes of gender and multicultural research as they affect advertising research. Last, she draws implications from the intersection of gender and race to suggest directions for future multicultural research.