Information technology and social relations: Portrayals of gender roles in high tech product advertisements

Abstract

Advertisements for technology products were sampled from professional journals in the fields of business, computing science/engineering, and library and information science. Content analyses revealed that men are portrayed in the ads more frequently than women, although the distribution of male and female figures in various poses is more egalitarian in ads found in traditional library journals. The depictions of male and female roles in relation to technology is largely stereotypic. Men are often portrayed as deep thinkers who are connected to the future, whereas women are often present in ads in order to convey the notion of simplicity of product use. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.