Portrayal Of Women In Advertisements Research Articles

Impact of Perceived Insecurity Due to Portrayal of Women in Ads on Buying Behaviour

The study aims to determine the significance of the Portrayal of Women in advertisements on perceived insecurity and consumer buying behaviour. To do so, primary data was collected by a floating questionnaire comprising closed-ended questions with five points on the Likert scale. The data was collected from 203 respondents by means of a convenience sampling method. SPSS was used to test and analyse the data. Regression was used to investigate the significance of the variable. The outcomes of the study we conducted show that the portrayal of women in advertisements significantly impacts perceived insecurity and consumer buying behaviour. The mean value for perceived insecurity and consumer buying behaviour is 3.52 and 3.30, respectively, so we can conclude that both constructs are statistically significant.

Sociocultural changes and portrayal of women in advertisements: A temporal investigation across product categories

We investigate how sociocultural changes impact the creative aspects of advertisements. We theorize that the sociocultural changes resulting from improvement in education standards and economic development improve the status of women in society. Next, we draw from the literature on self-congruence to argue that women with an enhanced status reject their decorative portrayal in advertisements and favor an empowered portrayal. As a result, marketers seeking to elicit a favorable response from consumers change their creative strategy to portray women in less decorative and more empowered roles. We analyzed television advertisements from the past 20 years across five product categories in an emerging economy. We find support for our key prediction and demonstrate a boundary condition for this effect. We show that the reduction in decorative portrayals is more likely to manifest in product categories where women exercise influence and not otherwise.

A Study Of Spectators Perception About The Women Objectification In Commercials Of Pakistani Electronic Media

The Western media has conducted extensive research on the objectification of women and has now become an established research field for feminist scholars. However, in Pakistan, the representation of women in television advertising and their objectification has received little attention. This research paper tries to describe the point of view of the spectators in contrast to the women objectification in TVCs. Survey research technique has been applied for the examining the views of 200 respondents of the survey and were classified based on gender. Usually, the advertisers use women as the marketing object to attract the attention of the consumers .The study reveals that women are portrayed as sex object for sexual satisfaction due to male chauvinist society. This study concludes that portrayal of women in advertisements is objectified sexually and uses women as commodity to capture the consumers. Overall evidence of female portrayal as a sex object is found in television commercials in Pakistani media and these commercials do not reflect culture and traditions of Pakistan.

Portrayal of women in advertisements: A regulating perspective

India is a country where women population is 631 million against the total population of 1.3 billion (sex ratio is 943 females per 1000 male). “The principle of gender equality is enshrined in the Indian Constitution in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties and Directive Principles. The Constitution not only grants equality to women, but also empowers the State to adopt measures of positive discrimination in favour of women.” On the contrary, the Indian television has portrayed the image of women in an unrealistic manner. Most advertisements project distorted image of woman, cigarette ads like “Wills”, in which a half-dressed woman with her male counterpart is seen enjoying the charm of smoking or of soft drink “Frooti”, where a woman is quenching her thrust in again a revealing dress in a swimming pool. In most of the television advertisements only the sexual signification of a female is being exploited for attention. The simple reason for it is that the sensational portrayal of women in advertisement helps to attract attention of the target audience in favour of a respective product or service. Advertisements like “Slice” (Soft Drink), many type of Deodorants, Body Spray like “Engage”, “Axe”, “Wild Stone” and products for men are quite sensuous in projecting women models. In many two and four wheeler advertisements and advertisement of E-commerce website of second hand products also have been using women models often as glamorous and self-centred. This paper aims to identify the important legal and constitutional provisions for women, in India, with special reference to Representation of women in advertisements. The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act was passed in 1986. It is an Act to prohibit indecent representation of women through advertisements or in publications, writings, paintings, and figures or in any other manner and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. The paper would also bring out the legal provisions, and questions its applicability to advertisements. “The Union Cabinet decision to extend the scope of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act of 1986 (IRWA) to cover the indecent portrayal of women through audio-visual digital media including SMSs, MMSs, etc., shows a light of hope, as it is a law focused towards preventing indecent portrayal of women in general.” A historical case study approach was done to trace the evolution and bring out the landmark judgments in favor of women and their representation in advertisements.

A Study Of Spectators Perception About The Women Objectification In Commercials Of Pakistani Electronic Media

The Western media has conducted extensive research on the objectification of women and has now become an established research field for feminist scholars. However, in Pakistan, the representation of women in television advertising and their objectification has received little attention. This research paper tries to describe the point of view of the spectators in contrast to the women objectification in TVCs. Survey research technique has been applied for the examining the views of 200 respondents of the survey and were classified based on gender. Usually, the advertisers use women as the marketing object to attract the attention of the consumers .The study reveals that women are portrayed as sex object for sexual satisfaction due to male chauvinist society. This study concludes that portrayal of women in advertisements is objectified sexually and uses women as commodity to capture the consumers. Overall evidence of female portrayal as a sex object is found in television commercials in Pakistani media and these commercials do not reflect culture and traditions of Pakistan.

People Perception Towards The Portrayal of Women In Advertisements: A Study With Special Reference to The Bangalore City

People Perception Towards The Portrayal of Women In Advertisements: A Study With Special Reference to The Bangalore City

Communality sells: The impact of perceivers' sexism on the evaluation of women's portrayals in advertisements

AbstractPortrayals of women in advertisements have a significant impact on the maintenance of gender stereotypes in society. Therefore, the present research investigates the effectiveness of communal and agentic female characters in advertisements as well as the question how evaluations of such characters are influenced by perceivers' sexist attitudes toward women. Results show that communal female advertising characters are evaluated more favorably than agentic ones and that these evaluations predict advertising effectiveness. Benevolent sexism predicts more positive evaluations of communal female advertising characters (studies 1 and 2). Moreover, hostile sexism predicts less positive evaluations of agentic female advertising characters when it is assessed under time pressure (Study 2). Implications of these findings for the perpetuation of gender stereotypes in advertisements and in society are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Portrayal of Women in Internet Advertising

Depiction of women in advertisements in mass media has been debated on many occasions. To understand the nature of such representation in internet is the present area of interest. Advertising is as a potent weapon worldwide, for promotion of ideas, goods and services. Portrayal of women in advertisements has been stereotypical in most mediums. In present scenario, websites in the internet acts as vital sources of information regarding different products and services. Even though the internet is a new medium developed and used mostly by young people, yet it has been found that patriarchal mindset is reflected in the way women are portrayed. Advertisers in the internet too have cashed in on visual appeal of women to attract the attention of the users. However, neutral depiction of women is getting some space. Depiction of women in internet advertising will change through proper gender sensitisation of developers of this medium.

Attitudes Towards Gender Portrayal in Advertising: An Australian Perspective

This study examines community attitudes of Australians towards gender portrayal in advertising. Despite some well-publicised cases involving sexually provocative billboards, we find that gender portrayal in advertising is not of major concern to many Australians. We also examined the relationship between attitudes to gender portrayal and Arnott's (1972) Female Autonomy Inventory, a measure of feminist consciousness. Ford and LaTour (1996) tested a model of attitudes toward gender portrayal in advertising that found an unambiguous relationship between attitudes to female autonomy and the perceived offensiveness of the portrayal of women in advertisements. Our study, in contrast, suggests that the relationship is more complex. While one group of high female autonomy respondents (that we labeled "Feminist Pessimists") rated the offensiveness of the portrayal of women in advertising very highly, another high female autonomy group (labeled "Feminist Optimists") did not. Hence regulatory bodies may treat complaints on stereotyping in advertisements from these groups in different ways and advertisers may modify their messages for maximum effect. Differences in the findings between this study and Ford and LaTour's are discussed.

Images of Women in General Interest and Fashion Magazine Advertisements from 1955 to 2002

This study was designed to examine the portrayal of women in advertisements in a general interest magazine (i.e., Time) and a women's fashion magazine (i.e., Vogue) over the last 50 years. The coding scheme used for this analysis was based on the one developed by sociologist Erving Goffman in the 1970s, which focuses primarily on the subtle and underlying clues in the picture content of advertisements that contain messages in terms of (stereotypical) gender roles. The results of this study show that, overall, advertisements in Vogue, a magazine geared toward a female audience,depict women more stereotypically than do those in Time, a magazine with the general public as a target audience. In addition, only a slight decrease in the stereotypical depiction of women was found over time, despite the influence of the Women's Movement.

Targeting Women

Over the past three decades, numerous studies have examined the portrayal of women in advertisements. This issue is of vital interest to marketers who are developing Segmentation strategies with women as targets. The study described here provides an updated assessment of this portrayal. The study utilized a content analysis of magazine advertisements to determine if a sample of females were depicted less frequently and less positively than a sample of males. The major finding is that women were not portrayed less frequently and less positively, confirming recent research evidence of more favorable usage of female models in later years.

Images of women in advertisements: Effects on attitudes related to sexual aggression

While the power of advertisements has long been known, investigations of sociocultural influences on sexual attitudes have been limited primarily to studies of sexually aggressive media. In this study we examined the effects on sexual attitudes of different portrayals of women in advertisements. Male and female white middle-class university students were exposed to one of three groups of advertisements. In one condition women were depicted as sex objects, in another in progressive or role-reversed roles, and a third condition comprised product oriented advertisements containing no human figures. Sexual attitudes were assessed using four subscales of Burt's Sexual Attitude Survey of 1980, a measure of attitudes believed to be rape-supportive, and conducive to sexual aggression against women. Before completing the Survey, subjects rated a series of advertisements on appeal and aesthetic dimensions. Whereas the product oriented advertisements were rated as more appealing than those featuring female figures, analyses showed that males exposed to the sex-object advertisements significantly more accepting of rape-supportive attitudes, and females exposed to the progressive female images were less accepting of such attitudes than were controls.

The portrayal of women in advertising: An overlooked area of societal marketing

The changing life styles of the American woman necessitate attention from marketing practitioners and academicians. The scope of this article is restricted to an examination of the portrayal of women in advertisements. Following a review of complaints of women in advertising and a look at selected research studies, the article deduces that the phenomena of sex roles in advertising has been inadequately investigated. Given this determination, the authors present a step-by-step framework for research on the portrayal of the sexes in promotion.