Gender stereotypes in advertising

 1) Find three adverts featuring women that are from the 1950s or 1960s. Save the images to your Media folder as jpegs and then import them into your blog post. Hint: You may wish to look at car, perfume or cleaning products but can use any product you wish.

2) Find three adverts featuring women that are from post-2000. Save the images to your Media folder as jpegs and then import them into your blog post.

3) What stereotypes of women can you find in the 1950s and 1960s adverts? Give specific examples. 

-The only purpose of women is to clean and they should be content with that, for example the women are given a hoover/fairy and they seems to be very happy with it.

-Women should always take care in the way that they look and always look presentable, this is shown in all of the adverts as the all have their hair done nicely and are wearing makeup.

-In all of the adverts the women are dressed very modestly, which could have been what they were expected to wear at the time

-Women should be happy cleaning up after their husbands, this is shown in the Bon Ami advert where the woman is happy to be cleaning and the husband is also very happy because she is cleaning which makes men look for those qualities in women because that is what they are taught that women do. 

-All of the women are white, this could be because the beauty standard was seen as being white

4) What stereotypes of women can you find in the post-2000s adverts? Give specific examples.

-Most of the women are dressed more provocatively

-Women are only interested in cosmetic products 

-Women like "girly" things like flowers, dresses or the colour pink

5) How do your chosen adverts suggest representations of gender have changed over the last 60 years? 

Overall I think that the adverts are a lot less sexist now than they were 60 years ago however their are still some stereotypical views, for example the adverts contain more racial diversity than they use to and the women in the adverts don't wear as much makeup as they use to and one of the women in the more recent adverts is wearing a suit which creates the message of female empowerment however if this was done 60 years ago then the public would've been shocked as they would see the woman as threatening to take the mans place as women were expected to be housewives or mothers only. However, the women are still promoting beauty products which might add to the stereotype that women should care about the way they look and the women are oversexualised.

Find three adverts that subvert gender stereotypes, post the images/links to your blog and write a paragraph about how they subvert the way women or men are usually represented in the media.

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  The 1st advert shows a woman as the main character and the focus of the movie it also shows her holding a sword which suggests it is an action movie which would've been a male dominated role.
• The 2nd advert shows a celebrity in a dress on the cover of vogue, the man has a large following and is not following the "masculine" stereotypes because he is wearing a dress and "feminine" jewellery. 
• The final advert shows a man who is apart of the LGBT+ community and dressed in more "feminine" clothing, the fact that he is part of the LGBT+ community might make him seem as less of a man.
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Read this Guardian article on seven female stereotypes that were identified in Australian adverts. Do you recognise the stereotypes that the article discusses? 

Stereotypes I recognise

Stereotypes I don't recognise

• Model mother – depicting women as the sole caretaker of the home and children.

• Passive little girl – ads showing young girls playing with dolls and home appliances.

• Observed woman – women losing their voice to a male narrator and often intersects with the sexualised woman stereotype.

• Sexualised woman – the seductive woman that suggests only value is their sexual appeal.

• Pretty face – ads that only include women for aesthetic purposes.

• Magical grandmother – older women, often in the kitchen, as a supporting character who is there to offer love to younger characters.

• Ticked-box character – women from diverse backgrounds being included but without any substance, lines or backstory.

This Guardian article reports the first adverts banned for using negative gender stereotypes. Do you think the ASA was right to ban them? 

Yes because it implies that men are incapable of looking after children which could make them feel as though they are irresponsible and it could also make young boys who will be fathers or current fathers less involved with looking after their child because they might think they are not suppose to, it could also suggest that it is a woman's job to safely look after children since the men in the advert cant do it.