Gender and Advertising

Gunter(1995)
theorist looks at gender and how women are being represented in magazines, in different decades. He found women in magazines adverts before 1970’s are hardly shown in paid work and if they were jobs would be associated with the female gender, ie secretary or a hairdresser. Gunter also concludes that the 'housewife' image was in decline after the 50's but was still quite common in the 60's and 70's. Even though women were shown more as working women, Gunter still found that women were shown to be performing domestic duties.

Cumberbatch (1995) l
ooked at 500 prime time tv ads in the uk and found advertisers had become wary of showing women doing housework, seen in 7% of the ad's, However for the first time it was shown men were doing cooking, but only on special occasions, and not as frequent as women did.

Scheibe (1979)
looked at T.V ad's and did an assessment of what male and female characters were shown to be concerned about. It was concluded women in ad's were more concerned about beauty, cleanliness, family and pleasing others, whereas men were only concerned about achievements and having fun.

Macdonald (1995)
"advertisers generally lagged behind women's magazines in the cultivation of new modes of address, even when the evidence suggested that commercial advantages could be gained from modernising their approach", macdonalds suggests advertisers do nothing to update and modernise women’s stereotypes.

Greer-
"every woman knows that she is a failure if she is not beautiful", This suggests a women is not a women if she is not physically attractive "Thirty years ago it was enough to look beautiful now a woman has to have a tight, toned body, including her buttocks and thighs, so that she is in good touch all over",

Walters (1998).
"If only 4% of men think that they are attractive, we should not be too quick to argue that only women feel cast down by the pressures of beautiful ideals" (1998). She also suggest attractive people earn more money.

Cortese,
wrote in the book called 'provocateur', women are shown to be the perfect provocateur as they are made to look like this through editing ect…. “Displays youth, good looks, sexual seductiveness and [beauty] perfection", in adverts women are made to look perfect promiscuous