Women in advertising

[Saumya]

History of Women in Television Advertisements

There are many different stereotypes of women in advertising. Throughout history there have been many studies that proved women were mainly portrayed on television advertisements as housewives or occupations that are subservient to men. Studies also show the disproportional ratio of women to men in TV advertisements. In the 70’s, it was reported that women were found on camera only 21 % of the time. Allan and Coltrane conducted a study that showed inversely, in the 80’s female appearance on TV advertisement were 5.8% less compared to the 50’s! (Pierce, 1999) In 1996, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Children Now calculated that women were on camera 42 percent of the time. Though this was an increase percentage wise from previous decades, gender inequalities still are rampant. This fact is proved a study conducted by Professors Daniel J. Bretl and Joanne Cantor of the University of Wisconsin (1995) which found that 90% of voice-overs used in advertisements were male, despite some of the products were aimed predominantly to females. (http://www.childnow.org)

an interesting page here.